PHILADELPHIA - An international meeting on the role of information and communications technologies in youth and adult education will be held Nov. 12-14 at the University of Pennsylvania.

"ICT in Non-formal and Adult Education: Supporting Out-of-School Youth and Adults" is the sixth in a series organized by Penn's Graduate School of Education and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris.  Attendees will be from the Americas, Australia, Europe, Africa and Asia.

The conference will focus on the large and growing number of out-of-school people who have inadequate skills for the changing global economy.

Among major presenters will be Susan Sclafani of the U.S. Department of Education, Neil Selwynn of the University of Cardiff, OECD's Beatriz Pont and Richard Sweet, Anthony Wilhelm of the Benton Foundation, Robert Kozma of the Stanford Research Institute, Dan Wagner of Penn's National Center on Adult Literacy and Robert Day of South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.  

"The vast majority of investments to date concentrates on the uses of new technologies for school children and youth," Wagner said, "but this meeting is the first focused on technology in out-of-school settings for the poorest populations.  It will bring together experts and policy makers from both industrialized and developing nations, further evidence that the problems and solutions to certain educational problems have global commonalities."

The conference is sponsored by Penn GSE, NCAL, Penn's International Literacy Institute and OECD and co-sponsored by the Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education, the Benton Foundation, the World Bank and the IBM Corporation.