Those nice people at the
Swindon Festival of Literature set aside one of their events each year for a speaker chosen by
Swindon Climate Action Network and this year the speaker was
Chris Rhodes, a former professor of chemistry and now chair of Transition Reading.
Most of Professor Rhodes' talk was on how higher education has changed over the years, with events such as the establishment of technical colleges and polytechnics, the removal of the distinction between polytechnics and universities, and the government target of 50% of all school leavers going to university.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/FGJpxOf3WQE" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/FGJpxOf3WQE</a>]]>This was followed by a question & answer session with Professor Rhodes, Andrea from our hosts
Lower Shaw Farm and Gerry from SCAN.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ywX4diGjc_A" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/ywX4diGjc_A</a>]]>(I only noticed after waiting nearly 5 hours for the videos to upload that I'd spelled Andrea's name wrong
)
The projected slides aren't very easy to read in the first video, so you can find the
Powerpoint file on the SCAN web site.
So why am I posting a talk about higher education in the environmental section of TS? I think this becomes clearer in the second video, which looks at the challenges which will face us as the consequences of climate change take hold, as resources are depleted, and whether an education system intent on churning out an army of graduates is really the best way of facing these challenges.
On an unrelated note, these are the first videos I've made using Pinnacle - thanks Geoff 
I got to grips with how to use it pretty quickly, certainly it beats the Windows 7 version of Movie Maker into a metaphorical cocked hat, and my PC barely broke into a sweat during the whole process. I think it'll take me a while to make sense of the rather bewildering array of format and quality options for the final video file though.
