A couple of snippets from Martin Bean's presentation at the OU Teaching Awards

A few things I wanted to keep from the presentation of Martin Bean, OU Vice Chancellor, at the OU Teaching Awards yesterday.

"Transforming information into meaningful knowledge"

In … a world (in which information is everywhere), sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information are paramount.

Mentoring and preparing students for the world in which they live, the central role of the university when it achieved its modern form in the 14th Century, is again at the forefront

Horizon Report 2010 [http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/chapters/trends/]

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes”

Denis Diderot, "Encyclopédie" (1755) [Online, I could only find this in wikipedia]

Conclusion: Teaching Matters

“..it is the role of us teachers, to make sense of the information that’s out there. To think differently, to act differently, to solve problems, to confront society in different ways”