Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms

Sir Ken Robinson‘s narrative about education is a powerful reading of the institutions at the heart of our societies. It is ‘a reading’ difficult to dispute.  RSA Animate have made this particular paradigm understandable to all with a brilliantly constructed series of drawings. You can see the whole series of RSA animations here. Please, if you are a student, parent or teacher, in fact, everyone, watch this 11-minute video.  Read More

Hung Parliaments and the Importance of Literature, Philosophy and History

  The political uncertainty of the election ‘result’ that Australians watched unfold last night will lead to concerned discussion about what a hung parliament will mean for our democracy. There will be many at the moment worrying, including myself, about the NBN plan and what will happen to the Digital Education Revolution, if Mr Abbott is annointed.  However, another interesting question is, obviously, how did a recently popular,... Read More

David Crystal – texts and tweets: myths and realities

Thanks to Ben Jones for alerting me to David Crystal’s recent talk. Like you, I have many of his books on my shelf and find his insights into language, especially the English language, sage.  Read More

Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world

Clay Shirky‘s TED talk deserves 13 minutes of your time.  Read More

Lessons from fashion’s free culture

Johanna Blakley‘s talk is an interesting rumination on the nature of ‘copyright’ in the fashion world.  Read More

The Empathic Civilisation

Tim Kastelle posted this video talk by Jeremy Rifkin which I repost here and am sure you will enjoy.  Read More

'Civilisation'

Kenneth Clark‘s television series Civilisation was written and filmed in the year of my birth, 1968. It is not funky, fashionable, contemporary, postmodern or politically correct but I recommend you view or read the book for a stimulating ’personal view’ of ‘civilisation’. Of course, when you view it now there are passages that make one cringe and would not be broadcast today. It is dated, understandably, in... Read More