On 16th December, the first TEDxPockington event was graciously hosted at Pocklington School. The event, ‘The Learning Attitude’, was structured around the valuable idea of meshing together great working designs in the fields of business, education and technology.
Talking about how different industries could share their experiences of teaching in different expertises, Mark Ronan (Headmaster at Pocklington School) spoke of how schools can work with local businesses to stimulate stronger links within communities.
Dr John Buttrick (Founder and director of Hull Children’s University) helps disadvantaged children through his work with Hull Children’s University, a programme designed to help these children to see the wider world beyond Hull. This is achieved through experience days at a wide variety of exciting places, such as 10 Downing Street, the BBC, and Age UK. His inspiring message of “It’s not how intelligent you are but how you are intelligent” resonated strongly with the audience.
Mat Lazenby (Lazenby Brown Creative Agency) proposed the idea that people are becoming less impressed by large companies as big businesses lack transparency. Lazenby put forward a new model, where well-networked thriving small specialised businesses are stronger than one all-encompassing large agency.
Chris Williams (Co-founder of Mr. Andrews Online) spoke about Mr. Andrews Online, a unique blog accessed worldwide by teachers for sharing teachers’ views on how to give feedback to pupils’ work. He also spoke of how technology can be used as a tool for learning and not necessarily a replacement. His message was that teachers should facilitate pupils’ connections to the real world by making learning matter.
Other speakers included Dr Sonia Joseph (Consultant Paediatrician at Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh), Carl Jarvis (Executive Headteacher at Hartsholme Academy), Neil McIntosh (Chairman of the Access Project) and Dr Jo Jordan (Chartered Clinical Psychologist at Yorkshire Psychology Practice and Rehabilitation Service), all delivering excellent presentations about breaking out of their area of expertise to bring fresh thinking and fresh ideas.
The vast diversity of the speakers at TEDxPocklington was truly exemplified by a powerful talk by Steve McNamara (Coach of the England Rugby League team), who spoke of fostering the aptitudes of his team, of drawing out the unique characteristics of people and of sourcing talent from unexpected places in his talk “Talent That Whispers”.
Having watched many TED and TEDx podcasts, it was an exhilarating experience to attend this event and experience a TEDx conference firsthand. Hopefully, there will be more TEDx events in the Yorkshire area in the future.
Many thanks to all speakers, TEDx, rradar and Pocklington School for organising the event. The recorded event will be uploaded to the TED website in January, available to view by all.