Category Archives: Oxford speakers
Schwartz lecture Feb 2010
Daniel Schwartz (Stanford). What teachers see is not what students see (refer variation theory). Expertise leads to precision. Students see “basic” category even with optimal variation. One way to test what they understand is to ask them to redraw a … Continue reading
Prof Dunbar – Phoning home: Keeping in touch in social networks
Prof Dunbar’s talk was highly entertaining, in part because he did a brilliant job of winding up the audience, mostly physicists and other quant types, with his Dunbar Number. How often does an evolutionary anthropologist get such an audience? His social brain … Continue reading
Acheson v. Wilson (Invariant Society)
Theme: lecturing style.Prof Acheson – targeted at the specific audience. Participation (slinky). Just a bit too hard for them. Curiosity piqued. Interesting problems. Did some maths! All sorts of visuals, old style mixed with new. Fabulous and engaging talk. Prof … Continue reading
Castells talk
Lecture at OUP Oct 2009. Wish he’d spoken more about the new paradigm (have to buy the book instead). I didn’t nod off once in 90 mins. Astonishing as he didn’t have any powerpoints and sat down to speak so I … Continue reading
Developing expertise theory: Gifted and Talented (Eyre: Feb 2010)
Eyre’s English model. Historical paradigms of G & T: Unique Individual: 1920′s. Micro level. Unique educational pathway for special purpose. Education system of little importance therefore no systemic response. Terman’s famous cohort of 1 500 US students out of 268 000 students missed … Continue reading
Greenfield and Lack – Role of the brain in peace negotiations (10 March)
Whatever else, Susan Greenfield practises what she preaches. Hers was one of the few lectures I’ve attended at Oxford that used minimal text in the power point slides. Even the Education Department lectures, including e-learning, flood us with text in the … Continue reading
Rusbridger talk: The Mutualised Newspaper
Alan Rusbridger’s Reuters Nuffield talk (March 2010). Rusbridger made it clear this was not a business model – obvious from the 10 points below. He’s convinced that at this stage newspapers can’t charge directly for online content. Different experience reading the … Continue reading
Prof J Willinsky (Stanford): ‘Locke and the intellectual property of learning’
Strongly in favour of Open Access to academic research. Argues that most research is publicly funded, at least in part, so public have a right to read journal articles. His research indicates that in 2007 there was a 20% chance … Continue reading
Prof Coleman – Reuters Nuffield talk
Transformation of elections by ICT? 50 years ago same debate about TV. Nixon v. Kennedy – Nixon won with radio listeners, Kennedy with TV. [Different audiences or is visual a game changer?] Web campaigns not changed much since 1997. Uni-directional. … Continue reading
