By far the most interesting keynote was from Dylan William from the Institute of Education. He was both entertaining and thought provoking on the theme assessment and challenged the ‘anti-teacher’ sentiments of some of the delegates. He argued that one of the biggest influences on how well a learner does is the teacher; much more important than what school the learner attends or class size. His main point was that formative assessment is key to learning. Although I found what he had to say both interesting and informative it may be that I just liked having my own prejudices confirmed.
Peter Norvig - view keynote
Director of Research at Google, impressive CV, introduced as someone who hates boring presentations - wow, this is going to be good! Oh dear. After 5 minutes of a quite entertaining presentation, which he must have given a million times before, he drifted of into full ‘teacher from Peanuts’ mode. Either I missed the point entirely or he didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard before.
Michelle Selinger - view keynote
Although Michelle Selinger was generally rather disappointing, she did make a couple of interesting points.
Employers say they want the following -
- Technical fluency 81%
- Communication skills using technology 74%
- Collaboration & teamwork 36%
- Leadership 34%
- Creativity 22%
However, she argued that those who have successful careers tend to be -
- comfortable with cultural diversity,
- High Tech/High Touch (people who have work-life balance
- Have a sense of pride - excellence
She talked about ‘pedagogical imperialism’ (the attitude that the western model of education is best), something that Hans-Peter Baumeister highlighted later in the conference
She also showed a really good South Park video about 15-20 minutes into the presentation.
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