King’s Academy launches online COVID-19 symposium

Jordan

Published: 2020-05-06 15:50

Last Updated: 2024-03-18 08:55


King’s Academy launches online COVID-19 symposium
King’s Academy launches online COVID-19 symposium

On April 21, King’s Academy launched a two-day online learning event, the King’s Academy COVID-19 Symposium, that aims to provide students, teachers, and the general public with the opportunity to understand, study and reflect on the current global COVID-19 pandemic. The symposium program, sessions, and resources are available on the King’s Academy website.

King’s Academy knew that the COVID-19 pandemic and its unprecedented effects shared the world over presented a unique learning opportunity. To that end, the Madaba-based school, which has been conducting classes online since the Jordanian government imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 17, decided to take the online learning experience a step further by designing, organizing and hosting the King’s Academy COVID-19 Symposium.

The symposium presents over 60 local and international speakers, from people working on the frontlines of the pandemic, to COVID-19 survivors, to teachers and economists, doctors, scientists, researchers, historians, artists, NGO workers, lawyers, bankers and more, to deliver and lead a series of short presentations, workshops and discussion forums addressing the COVID-19 crisis from multiple disciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives.

Among the local experts invited as guest speakers are Jordanian Minister of Health HE Dr. Saad Jaber, Minister of Finance HE Dr. Mohamad Al-Ississ, Governor of the Central Bank of Jordan HE Dr. Ziad Fariz and Bank Al Etihad Chief Executive Officer HE Nadia Al Saeed who speak about Jordan’s approach to the COVID-19 crisis, financial interventions and mitigations, and their vision of the future while reflecting on the kind of leadership needed to transition to a post- COVID world.

The symposium offers the opportunity to explore questions about the nature and effects of COVID-19 through the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math, in addition to economic and health considerations, medicine, law, government and politics, as well as through the unique lens of the humanities — art, history and literature — and much more.

Questions such as “What is the COVID-19 virus?”, “Why has Jordan responded to the COVID- 19 pandemic the way that it has?”, “What is “exponential growth” and how does it help us understand how viruses spread?” and “How is this pandemic affecting the global economy?” are just a sampling of the wide range of questions posed and ensuing discussions that took place during the symposium.