The Geography of Thought

For the past three days I have had no codes.
However, that does not mean that I have had nothing to do.
On the contrary I have been more busy than I usually am during a 'normal week'.

Instead of having codes, we had a large conference on 'The Geography of Thought'. This essentially means that we spent our days in lectures and small group discussions examining how different people learn, and how culture influences the way we see the world.
It was three days full of long talks, and good talks and new ideas.
My brain feels very full.

Here are a few of the topics and discussions that I was a part of:

• The Ecology of Knowledge (Dr. Robert Smith): This examined the work of Jerzy Wojciechowski and examined his knowledge laws, such as ‘The more we know, the more questions we have’, or ‘Thought induces change’ and asked 'is the huge increase in knowledge available to us wholly beneficial?'
• Neuroscience (Dr. Milena Penkowa): The understanding of brain neuroscience and what it means for teaching, learning and developing human potential
• Intercultural Understanding (Andrew Flory and Pedro Martinez ):What does intercultural understanding mean and what are the implications of this for building a better College and Society?
• Cultural Genogram (Selena Sermeno): Learning to distinguish the differences between cultural awareness [knowledge of other cultures], and cultural sensitivity, which is the capacity to relate respectfully to cultural differences.
• Islamic vs western Perspectives (Dr. Caroline Ellwood):Cultural Intelligence and difficult issues. How ‘Islam views the West and The West views Islam’: perceptions and misconceptions .
• Joining Nature to Nurture (John Abbott): an Education that goes with the 'Grain of the Brain'
• Creativity and Bipolar affective disorder (Chris Davies): This examined both the nature of BP disorder itself and its link to creativity.