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Julia Manoukian - March 8, 2013
On Sunday, March 10, the McInnes Room will come alive with ideas and inspiration as Dalhousie welcomes TEDx for the second time in as many years. This time, however, it’s going to be a lot bigger. Last year’s capacity of 100 has been bumped up to 350 and advance tickets have already sold out.
“It’s about the future of education everywhere,” says event producer Becky Richter. “It’s not limited to professors or people at Dal.”
For the unconverted, TEDx is a regional conference licensed by TED, a globally recognized conference series devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” The organization’s TED Talks videos have been viewed online more than one billion times.
This year’s host of TEDx Nova Scotia is the founder and co-owner of The Wooden Monkey restaurants, Lil MacPherson. The local foodie is a trained presenter for Al Gore’s Climate Change Project and has attended United Nations Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun.
The event features nine speakers, including several with Dal connections:
- Robert Huish, International Development Studies professor
- Ian Taylor, who runs the technical operations of Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick and is also an audio-visual system designer, musician, and music educator
- Sue Molloy, Engineering faculty member and marine renewable energy, eco-ships, and sustainable engineering specialist
- Dan Falk, Dal alum and science journalist
Other presenters include Rumeet Billan, named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women at 25 and again at 28; Max Haiven, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Art and Public Policy at NYU and cultural studies professor at NSCAD; Tova Sherman, founding director of the muti-service disability agency ReachAbility; Glenn Knockwood, youth coordinator for the Mi’kmaq Native Friendship Centre; and Brent Hiscock, world traveller and “perpetual student” of cultures.
It will also showcase three diverse musical acts: Dal students Moe Kabbara and Luke Domm with their mesh of eastern European music/jazz/indie folk; native Haligonian Dave Fultz, who’s been described by his friends as “someone who can sing like a banshee and hold down a house party like a champ”; and Ben Caplan, an award-winning musician whose voice has been compared to Tom Waits and his stage presence to Freddy Mercury.
The idea of this year’s event is to build upon discussions from the DALVision 2020 event in November 2012, and further academic and cultural conversation surrounding the future of higher education.
“It’s a timely discussion we’re having,” says Richter. “The university has partnered with us this year; they’re planning what the future of education will look like at Dalhousie.”
Additional information about the speakers and event schedule can be found at TEDxNovaScotia.ca
Readers Say
March 8, 2013 12:07 AM
This years video and lineup does not give me sort of baffled at the thinking behind the event name. Your speaker lineup it too centred on Dalhousie people, it is a big task to book speakers, but what you couldn't find someone from one of the other educational institution in Nova Scotia? TEDx is a representation of ideas and culture of a given region(when it is a regional licence). The attempt is noble, but the video alone only shows me what Dal kids get for their tuition money. Perhaps Dal organizers should just apply for a university institution TEDx licence. The whole of Nova Scotia is a big job to cover and we would not want the world to think of us as coming form such a small and narrow stage.
Good luck after the event when TEDx will evaluate your performance, perhaps they will advice something more appropriate.
March 8, 2013 10:19 AM
March 8, 2013 11:21 AM
"TED thinking assumes complex social problems are essentially engineering challenges, and that short nuggets of Technology, Edutainment, and Design can fix everything, fast and cheap."
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2013/03/lets_save_great_ideas_from_the.html
March 9, 2013 6:23 PM
'Stephens echoes those on the TED stage and those in Silicon Valley when he talks about the future of higher education thusly: “the advancement of technology means that educational institutions are being dismantled. … And just like that, the three major functions of a university—knowledge delivery, community building, and employer signaling—are replaced.”
'Of course, to narrow “the university to these three “major functions” is, well, narrow. What about knowledge building? What about research? What about civics and service? What about the public good?
'And let’s be clear here: this is a calculated view and one perfectly crafted for the intellectually impeccable TED stage, one that situates education institutions as attacked by the Internet, rather than as the co-creators of it; one that posits professors as necessarily resistors to change, rather than agents of innovation.
'And framed as such, this signals a massive opportunity —a wink and a nod to those investors in the audience — for the tech entrepreneur."
http://hackeducation.com/2013/03/03/hacking-your-education-stephens-hole-in-the-wall-mitra/
I wish the time, effort and resources going into things like these TEDx talks and the absurdly corporate-style "Dal Vision" event (cartoons to fill in? really?) -- not to mention into funding the dubiously useful CLT -- would simply be channeled into supporting the ongoing work of the university's faculty and staff. We could start with getting up-to-date technology in every classroom, for instance, to facilitate current attempts to offer innovative pedagogy.