A conversation with George Auckland: a joint CAL Conference/BBC event

The BBC and the CAL Conference 2011 invite you to join them at Manchester Metropolitan University for a conversation with George Auckland, Head of Learning Innovation at the BBC.

The evening starts at 7.00 pm on Tuesday 12 April 2011 at the Geoffrey Manton Building, Oxford Road, Manchester.

This very special event will look back on a unique educational career and forward into the future of educational media. For this event, George will be in conversation with Bill Thompson, the well-known technology critic and commentator on digital culture. Bill has a widely read weekly column, Billboard, on the BBC News website, and appears regularly as a studio expert on the BBC World Service’s ‘Digital Planet’.

An ‘evening with George Auckland’ will showcase the groundbreaking career of George Auckland, the Head of Learning Innovation at the BBC. The evening, which will bring together teachers, researchers, developers and programme makers, will provide a unique insight into how some of the BBC’s great educational innovations have emerged and give a glimpse of where developments may be heading.

George Auckland Biography

In a BBC career spanning over 40 years, George Auckland has made an outstanding contribution to the lifelong learning agenda in the UK both in TV and Online. This work has enriched the learning experiences of millions, and he has played a major role in supporting thousands of people to realise their potential as learners especially with the development of their basic skills.

George joined the BBC in 1969 making TV programmes in nearly every area of the department’s wide ranging educational output including adult literacy and numeracy, computing, hands-on science and cookery. He made a major contribution to the UK’s science education by making science accessible and relevant to everyday life.  Not only was he responsible for giving Carol Vorderman her first major break in BBC television, he persuaded numerous public figures (including Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister) to participate in scientific experiments ("Take Nobody's Word for It") and worked on the hugely influential Johnny Ball series “Think of a Number” and “Think Again”.  Both are regarded as two of the finest examples of informal science education for young people ever made.

In 1996 George created the BBC’s Education website and the BBC’s online learning department owes its inception to George Auckland. He commissioned a number of influential sites including Webwise, the History and Health websites and the inaugural Teletubbies site. During this exciting period he was also instrumental in the growth of other technologies such as interactive television, video-on-demand, BETSIE (BBC education text to speech internet enhancer) which allowed blind people to access increasingly complex web pages, and a variety of European co-funded digital projects.

As if this wasn’t enough, in 2001 George created the Innovation Unit for BBC Learning and tasked it with investigating editorial, pedagogical and technological innovation. Since then George has been at the heart of cutting edge developments supporting the UK’s lifelong learning agenda. He has been a consistent champion of broadband and R&D in learning and made a massive contribution to the success of the BBC’s interactive TV pilot in Hull. He is currently pioneering trials in the use of wireless, mobile and IPTV technologies.

Although George’s work makes its own eloquent testament to the significance of his contribution to UK society and to the BBC, George himself has been a fantastic ambassador both for BBC Learning and for the wider educational community in the UK.

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THE CAL CONFERENCE 2011

13 - 15 April 2011 - Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

CAL (Computer Assisted Learning) is one of the leading international conferences in the field of education and technology. It brings together researchers across all education sectors, from primary years, to informal learning, to higher education, and across a range of disciplines from psychology to computer science, media and cultural studies. www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/ 

• Programme - www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/programme.asp
• Invited Speakers - www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/speakers.asp
• Register now -  www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/registrationInfo.asp