TedxNCL

 

I was back again in Newcastle attending the TedxNCL this time!

The theme for this year’s Ted at Newcastle was Research & Discovery and there is a lot to be discussed on this topic indeed – with a broad range of speakers from educationalists, medical professionals, theatre-makers to patients, the event certainly did prove that research and discovery follows us everywhere that we go.

Speakers

Prof. John Isaac a clinical scientist working on immune system and arthritis showcased how by inculcating patients into hard research, by opening up the doors of colaboration and creating a translation system they were able to achieve new grounds. Much like the patient-speaker (for lack of a better word, this shows the need for a Ted talking about research and discovery) Tilly-Hales who’s been battling with an autoimmune liver disease since 1986. She’s organised several support groups and made patient’s voices an integral part of future research on liver diseases.

Gordon Poad posed an interesting question – we often presume by pursuing higher education we’re helping the youth develop critical thinking skills but as the statistics would show, only 1% of UK population have a PhD and only 1% of kids who leave care ever access universities. Let’s not consider university for a second, even the ones with degrees are trained and specialised to the point that they can only communicate with their own kind! As a theorist I can affirm that it is a task to communicate theoretically-sensible ideas to a stranger on the train, unless that strange has a PhD in Rhetorics or something equally specialised form of knowledge base.

“Art is a means of making sense of the world without using literacy, numeracy and logic”

To address this very question Gordon works with researchers, medics, scientists, artists, computer programmers and anyone else you can think of in communicating their work by performance. He’s specially interested in communicating with the hard to reach communities because that’s where the challenge arises to talk to someone completely different to you.

As we examined new methods of relating and exchanging ideas Janet Eyre  presented an interesting dimension to our thinking of video games. Working within neonatal care on brain development, it soon occurred to her that environmental conditions played a huge role in the developmental motor disorders. Much of her research proves how video games are inherently beneficial in keeping your brain consequently the muscles which the brain controls. This unconventional positive spin on helping us all maintain our motor skills maybe the simplistic answer we need – play more games!

“A teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be”

Sugata Mitra a professor in educational technology really did cut to the point with the above statement. By working with children in harsh conditions especially in poorer economies he’s looking at ways computers could become an indispensable tool to educate kids all over the world. Of course ICTs and the machine-human dialogue has long suffered criticism, maybe it is time we gave it a chance and allowed for those less privileged to gain the same skills as everyone else. What could possibly go wrong? Things couldn’t get any worse than they already are for someone who does not have access to basic education.

What I take away from it…

All interesting provocations, in medicine, in art, in essential thinking strategies I agree and what struck me the most was how every aspect of these diverse research projects interjected one another. The video game culture penetrating into hard sciences and medicine, technological innovating positioning itself with not just educational systems but also the economics of developing societies and of course patients forming an integral part of medical research – no other time in history have we seen such motivation to bring together seemingly contradictory elements at the crux of innovation.

Specialisations are great but I believe we see now more than ever the need to reach out and encourage participation from as diverse a source as possible and that to me, is the biggest breakthrough in research and discovery yet. I would love to know if you have any interesting thoughts on how to do research better or creative explorations of your own on research and discovery – leave me a comment or find me on