Tuesday,
The walk from the hotel to the conference venue is a pleasant one (either way you go - along the river bank or via the streets) and I’ve noticed that there are a fair share of Volvos on the streets here... Duh! A few hoons with their doof, doof, making heavy going of the cobbled streets but otherwise sedate drivers in their sensible cars. There are few bicyles around and it makes sense - fairly flat landscape and special section of the footpath is bitumen so the ride is smooth - so there are lots of bikes parking/locking places. We are fairly well in the old part of town and the ‘industrial landscape’ has changed so that it now houses the university and the conference center, and all the paper mill industry has moved out of town. Many of the existing buildings that were owned by the Holmen Company still stand and they are all painted Nörrkoping yellow (check the photos). Many are now halls/perfomance auditoriums and university buildings as well as a few converted to museums.
And now to the conference talks for today: Philip Adey gave a presentation that examined the notion of a general intellectual capacity that everyone has. There’s no quick solution of magic bullet (that will mean you can teach everyone something) but if you allow for the notion that there is a general intelligence, then there are specific ways to stimulate this while allowing for different types of abilities. He discussed the range of intellectual capacities concerning general mental abilities (including the cohabitation of general and special abilities), cognitive modules, cognitive development, and some evidence for plasticity of the general processor. All sounds a bit complex, but it made sense on the day.
David Perkins spoke about he Thoughtful Will and took us on a journey to discover just what the will is, and suggested that it may be a resource that is a reservoir of strategic wisdom about self-management. It was very good, the guy is 78 and he was walking around on the stage and then off the stage and up into the audience - very engaging and had a conversation with us rather then giving a lecture.
Bob Swartz did a presentation on Infusing Critical and Creative Thinking into Content Instruction and didn’t impress me all that much. He had tiny little overheads and didn’t seem well prepared. His topic was really about using ‘graphic organisers’ that facilitate skillful thinking.
Listened to Jonathan Rowson who spoke about, What is it like to be a Chess Grandmaster? A very interesting talk and boiled down to the fact that you need to take into account your intuition as well as be able to process the cognitive load. Gave a nice insight into the world of competitive chess and showed how a lot of playing the game at that level is about looking for patterns and not necessarily making the best move but what feels or looks right.
The day finished with Per Frankelius suggesting that time has come for a new innovation perspective. He showed how innovation has changed over the 50 years and that we now need new models.
We went on a dramatised tour of Nörrkoping in the evening before the dinner. It was raining a little and the tour guide brought some umbrellas with her. ‘Joanna’ was the person who told us about like 100 years ago. How a young girl come to the big city, had to find accommodation and a job. You needed somewhere to live before you could get a job, and you needed a job before you could get somewhere to live! The problem was usually solved by someone renting a corner of a room for you to sleep in and you paid some rent to call the place home. She was dressed in period clothing and talk more about her getting married to a good (sober) man who also had a job and having four children. It was nice to get the history lesson from a personalised context.
Conference dinner in the evening and we chatted with Kathy from Sydney and watched/heard a thunderstorm come over, then saw a rainbow and then blue skies. Nice food again with a range of yummy (cold) seafood and strawberries and ice cream for desert. Actually had some Four Sisters Shiraz with the food! The entertainment afterwards were a very lively musicgroup group who jumped around a fair and kept the crowd amused.
We also went to a demonstration called Memory of the Universe, of some new 3D universe mapping software where a guy (via Skype from New York) took us on a 3D tour of the universe starting with our planet and traveling out to edge of the know universe. This as far as light has travelled in something like 10 billion years. I lost track of the the dimensions once we left our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Very interesting though and amazing to see, made me feel very small. The photo below shows the earth surrounded by communication and geo-stationary satellites, the space station, the moons orbit, the geo-magnetic field and the sun (as well as other stars).
So, to sum up - it’s all too magnificent & wonderful for me to comprehend and understand completely.
The walk from the hotel to the conference venue is a pleasant one (either way you go - along the river bank or via the streets) and I’ve noticed that there are a fair share of Volvos on the streets here... Duh! A few hoons with their doof, doof, making heavy going of the cobbled streets but otherwise sedate drivers in their sensible cars. There are few bicyles around and it makes sense - fairly flat landscape and special section of the footpath is bitumen so the ride is smooth - so there are lots of bikes parking/locking places. We are fairly well in the old part of town and the ‘industrial landscape’ has changed so that it now houses the university and the conference center, and all the paper mill industry has moved out of town. Many of the existing buildings that were owned by the Holmen Company still stand and they are all painted Nörrkoping yellow (check the photos). Many are now halls/perfomance auditoriums and university buildings as well as a few converted to museums.
And now to the conference talks for today: Philip Adey gave a presentation that examined the notion of a general intellectual capacity that everyone has. There’s no quick solution of magic bullet (that will mean you can teach everyone something) but if you allow for the notion that there is a general intelligence, then there are specific ways to stimulate this while allowing for different types of abilities. He discussed the range of intellectual capacities concerning general mental abilities (including the cohabitation of general and special abilities), cognitive modules, cognitive development, and some evidence for plasticity of the general processor. All sounds a bit complex, but it made sense on the day.
David Perkins spoke about he Thoughtful Will and took us on a journey to discover just what the will is, and suggested that it may be a resource that is a reservoir of strategic wisdom about self-management. It was very good, the guy is 78 and he was walking around on the stage and then off the stage and up into the audience - very engaging and had a conversation with us rather then giving a lecture.
Bob Swartz did a presentation on Infusing Critical and Creative Thinking into Content Instruction and didn’t impress me all that much. He had tiny little overheads and didn’t seem well prepared. His topic was really about using ‘graphic organisers’ that facilitate skillful thinking.
Listened to Jonathan Rowson who spoke about, What is it like to be a Chess Grandmaster? A very interesting talk and boiled down to the fact that you need to take into account your intuition as well as be able to process the cognitive load. Gave a nice insight into the world of competitive chess and showed how a lot of playing the game at that level is about looking for patterns and not necessarily making the best move but what feels or looks right.
The day finished with Per Frankelius suggesting that time has come for a new innovation perspective. He showed how innovation has changed over the 50 years and that we now need new models.
We went on a dramatised tour of Nörrkoping in the evening before the dinner. It was raining a little and the tour guide brought some umbrellas with her. ‘Joanna’ was the person who told us about like 100 years ago. How a young girl come to the big city, had to find accommodation and a job. You needed somewhere to live before you could get a job, and you needed a job before you could get somewhere to live! The problem was usually solved by someone renting a corner of a room for you to sleep in and you paid some rent to call the place home. She was dressed in period clothing and talk more about her getting married to a good (sober) man who also had a job and having four children. It was nice to get the history lesson from a personalised context.
Conference dinner in the evening and we chatted with Kathy from Sydney and watched/heard a thunderstorm come over, then saw a rainbow and then blue skies. Nice food again with a range of yummy (cold) seafood and strawberries and ice cream for desert. Actually had some Four Sisters Shiraz with the food! The entertainment afterwards were a very lively musicgroup group who jumped around a fair and kept the crowd amused.
We also went to a demonstration called Memory of the Universe, of some new 3D universe mapping software where a guy (via Skype from New York) took us on a 3D tour of the universe starting with our planet and traveling out to edge of the know universe. This as far as light has travelled in something like 10 billion years. I lost track of the the dimensions once we left our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Very interesting though and amazing to see, made me feel very small. The photo below shows the earth surrounded by communication and geo-stationary satellites, the space station, the moons orbit, the geo-magnetic field and the sun (as well as other stars).
So, to sum up - it’s all too magnificent & wonderful for me to comprehend and understand completely.
No comments:
Post a Comment