Last week Mark Russell and I presented at the JISC Annual Conference, which this year was held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London. The opening keynote speaker was Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor of the Open University. One of his Keynote themes was that students are often well able to find information - there certainly is enough of it out there, but are less adept at assessing the veracity of the information they do find. He spoke about teaching students to not only discover, but also to teach them to "triangulate" the information. He then went on to challenge the audience - always a good thing(" I'm an Australian - you can't offend me!" was one of Martin's opening gambits). He spoke of the different perspectives between British and Australian textbooks in dealing with the Galliploi campaign of the first world war. This is still clearly an emotive topic after over 90 years and brings into sharp focus the concept of triangulating knowledge - and the need for students to develop their own understanding and perspective.
All in all a really challenging and informative keynote address
All in all a really challenging and informative keynote address
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Martin gave a keynote at the ALT-C in September - it was inspirational - he is a great speaker and amazing to have a VC with the knowledge and enthusiasm for employing technology to achieve change.
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