Let’s flashback a few years. Remember waiting anxiously for those A-level results to see if you’d ever get to punt on the Isis and have drinks at the K.A.?

Pretend, for a minute, that you hadn’t made the cut. How would you have felt about attending, as a substitute, a fictional university I call Oxford.net, right from the comfort of your own computer, where your loving parents could still feed you Sunday roast dinners? That option might not be far off, if developments on my side of the pond are any indication.

For years, we’ve been seeing educators take advantage of the Internet through articles and books published online. That was Internet 1.0, all about aggregating as much information as possible to make it easy for the reader looking for say…an essay answer on the French Revolution to find everything he needs.

Now we’re into Internet 2.0, all about connecting information in unpredictable ways. The best Web 2.0 ideas aren’t information collected for one audience, and Web 2.0 readers aren’t in search of information on specific topics in quite the same way.

Today, the best ideas are written and disseminated to a first audience online, on a blog like this one, and if they’re successful, they end up in everyone’s inboxes. The process is viral—you send this post to your friend, he posts it on his blog, someone reads it there and Googles my name and finds a You Tube video of me at the beach and maybe links back to my posting on You Tube, which might lead someone searching “beach” on You Tube, to this post about education.

The goal of Internet 2.0 is to spread information around, not collect it in one place. Which means the goal of Education 2.0 is to spread education to everyone, and not confine it to university campuses.

As I just described in my column , something like this is happening in the United States: U.C. Berkeley has just launched a YouTube channel , where I can learn from Berkeley professors, even though I’m not an enrolled student. MIT and Princeton are in feud over real estate for the campuses they’ve established in Second Life, a virtual world where users set up a persona, or avatar, who can then buy property, attend movies and interact with other avatars representing real people all around the world.

Professors from each of these schools interviewed in the press argue that the new technologies are more than cool gadgets for them: they are new ways of thinking about teaching, and they are changing the way students learn. you don't have to pay for Princeton to go to Princeton in Second Life. You don't have to get into Berkeley to simulate biology labs by video conference.

A tutorial system like Oxford’s would probably work even better online than an American university’s, where the emphasis is on putting students in classes together.
Reading and writing for tutorial essays is a solo task, and in tutorials, all you really need is your tutor. If digital libraries like Project Gutenberg are putting all your sources online, and your tutor has an avatar too (like the professors at MIT do), how many more young people would suddenly have access to an Oxford education?

This is education, of the highest caliber, universally accessible, yet without undermining the experience for the on-campus select and I think it’s just around the corner.

But is the experience good enough to replace university for a student who can’t afford it? Would you trade in Oxford for an online download? Would you send your children to Oxford.net? And if not, what do you make of the virtual experiments of American universities?

A bit better this. The originally-named satirical blog Satire Blog thinks the top dogs should rename Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport "Willy Brandt Airport", "Helmut Kohl Airport", or "Al-Qaida Airport. We'll chase you into the sky", according the decision makers' political stances. I'd say Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, which Ryanair fly to, should be renamed "Hahn Airport: Nowhere near Frankfurt", as that's where it is (3-4 hours by train in fact). And London Luton should just be "Luton", or perhaps "Inverness Luton".Back to political themes, anyone for "Heathrow Cameron Airport"? It changes its name depending on passengers' own preferences.Please post suggestions below. PS I have discovered that Germany has a whole blog dedicated to Wales . For some reason.
Cherwell 24 is not responsible for the content of external sites

People here go to funfairs, some people go twice a week. They look forward to it.
The whole af-fair (apologies) began when I exitted the classroom and walked into a semi-circle of giggly girls. Many of these females dye their hair blond and straighten it, so I have difficulty remembering who is who, and meeting three classes of thirty in three days doesn’t help. I walked directly into their trap, attracted by the welcoming smiles. A blond one asks me if I want to go to the “funny fair.” I agree.We walk together across town, and a brunette’s enthusiasm peaked when she discovered she was born on the same day as me, in the same year. Three boys joined us and they proceeded to kiss their girlfriends. A custom in Belgium is to frequently talk of your amoureux, it is even better if he is there with you, or if this is not possible, to show the language assistant innumerable photos of him.The fun fair attractions had the usual sinister neon lights and aggressive spray paint. I thought I might as well quit being such a cynical sissy and go whole hog, so I bought my ticket for the ride they’d picked, the most daunting one there (propelled into the air on a sort of levvy and twisted upside down in the process, stock fairground business). Before boarding, I ask the attendant whether I should take my boots off. This is when I began to have qualms.This man had a pot belly, a bushy moustache and bushy grey eyebrows. He was bald and had a very round head. He said, “are they your boots?” and I said “yes, but should I take them off?” He asked me again whether these boots belonged to me, so I asked again whether he thought they might fall off, and got the same reaction as before so I said just that, no, they weren’t mine so he grumbled and walked off. I strapped myself into my seat. The ride itself was terrifying. I kept flying about my seat and slipping because I’m quite puny. More often than not I was upside down, at least at level two of the Eiffel Tower. I was also thinking that I’d lose my giant pink hairclip. The whole time they played 80’s music on repeat and groaned incomprehensible words that bellowed out a megaphone. As I flew about above Liege I understood why the bushy man couldn’t answer me. He must have lost plenty of brain cells from flying about in his machine. Maybe that’s why Belgium doesn’t have a government at the moment. I still have my pink clip though. Lucky. And a blond-haired girl wondered if I wanted to go to the funny fair again today. I politely declined, along with a karaoke invite.

£3000 worth of computers were stolen from an office in South Bar, Banbury, on Monday night.Four Toshiba laptops, each costing around £800, were stolen from the premises. The burglars are thought to have entered via a rear window, which had been forced open.Police believe the raid may have been interrupted, as other computer equipment had been left behind.

Plans have been announced for a new exchange programme with a university in Taiwan. Earlier this month the President of the National Taiwan University , Lee Suc-chen, visited eight British and French universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, with the aim of promoting cooperative research.

The University of Oxford is said to be interested in work with the NTU on the subject of ‘Austronesian culture.’ A spokesman for the Taiwanese university said that it would be a major boost to send students to world famous institutions.

By Katherine Hall

By William Harris

Hammer and Tongue 'Protect the Human' Poetry Slam

“We’re running on poetry time”, said the bubbly, pink-clad Sophia Blackwell. That’s when I knew I was at a poetry slam. For the uninitiated, a poetry slam is a competitive display of verbal gymnastics: performers have three minutes (and a thirty second grace period) to slam on any subject, providing it’s their own work. Immediately after, they are judged Olympics-style by a panel of experts with a score out of ten (to one decimal place).

As I’ve said, the event was run on “poetry time”, which, roughly translated, means it started forty-five minutes late. I used this time to acquaint myself with the assembled performers and spectators. Since the evening was a charity event for Amnesty International, human rights was on the agenda. “Everyone will be interested by arms export into Burma”, said one of the organisers. And she was right, judging by the numbers who signed the open letters to the British government and Indian High Commission. Human rights was also a hot topic among the evening’s performers. The first guest star spent the majority of his time discussing the pointlessness of discussing celebrity culture, though he did have a word to say on David Hasselhoff and the potential merits of Banksy as Prime Minister!

Another fiercely political poem was performed by Dada Meinhof, a situationist council communist, who spent his three minutes explaining the necessary sacrifices of revolution. The evening certainly included a diverse range of topics, including gay rights, Jeremy Clarkson and a naked bike ride (“baring arse, cock and titty through London’s fair city”).

Slam poetry is a performance as well as a literary art, and the deliveries varied greatly. Blackwell had a whimsical, conversational tone; Meinhof took the soapbox approach: highly prophetic but not so poetic. The closing performance, given by Steve Larkin, was a monologue in the character of an embittered London tour guide. The sight of tourists, bankers, the London Eye and the Thames upsets him so much that he vows to “raze London to the ground.”

The majority of the audience were loyal followers of the poetry slam phenomenon. Although there is no stereotypical slammer, the events attract a younger crowd than might be expected at a conventional poetry reading. This gig was no exception, and the crowd seemed to appreciate the edgy lyrics and rhythmic delivery of most of the poems, with the judges awarding high marks across the board.

If you’d like to experience Slam for yourself, there are events approximately once a week now that the season has started. The next is on Friday 26th October at the East Oxford Community Centre. For more information go to www.hammerandtongue.co.uk.

by Marley Morris 

Berkoff’s tragedy ‘Greek’, based on Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus Rex’, thrusts in front of us a vision of a decadent and brutal London.  It evokes William Blake’s description of the city in his famous poem, and is almost entirely populated by thugs and whores. Matt Ryan’s production of the play brings this vision to life, with the four actors onstage managing to capture London’s hustle and bustle, its unforgiving callousness, and its bitter social divides, without forgetting the city’s natural charm.

The production begins with the actors jarringly coming into motion and a vivid description of the local “corner pub” by Eddy (James Reid).  This immediately sets the scene for the action to come. The actors’ faces are painted a ghostly white, and this together with the faint sound of carnival music creates a terrifying tragicomic tone. Therefore when Eddy’s parents (played by Natasha Kirk and Phillip Aspin) reveal the gypsy’s horrific prediction after recounting an otherwise cheerful trip to the fair, the sudden twist in the tale seems almost inevitable.

But the pace of the play does not slow down from there. Instead we rocket through Eddy’s journey, meeting dozens of bizarre and gruesome caricatures as we go. (In fact, if anything the production moves too quickly; we are barely allowed an opportunity to catch our breath.) The location is endlessly switching: one moment the stage is a London alley, then it transforms into Heathrow airport.  All these shifts are made through the movements of the actors – one becomes a complaining customer, another makes the sound of a starting aeroplane. These energetic scene changes could have been more believable, however, if the set had been used as imaginatively as the actors, even if the Berkoffian notion of minimalist scenery is taken into account.  As it is, turning a table over onto its side is hardly the most original use of props possible (and begs the question of whether it’s needed at all).             It is in the acting that this production really takes shape. Perhaps most memorable is the linguistic battle between Eddy and his actual father, both actors clearly having a lot of fun as they mime each act of violence upon one another. Natasha Kirk’s long monologue as the Oracle is performed excellently, even if it does tend to over egg the pudding. The ensemble pieces, meanwhile, are even more impressive, from the actors’ opening depiction of an archetypal London pub to their staging of a typical dreary day in Eddy’s family home. The emphasis of movement and sound – surely the hallmark of a good Berkoff production – is wonderful. Although the play is now slightly dated, and can seem to be overloaded somewhat with a multitude of convoluted themes, its essence – that is, an atmosphere of cruelty and dissolution – is brought across with full force in this production.

by Marc Kidson
 

It is a pet fact of many History teachers that before becoming one of the chief architects of mass murder for the Nazi regime, Heinrich Himmler had been a modest chicken farmer. It seems incongruous that a man of so provincial an occupation could have stamped his mark so irredeemably across the twentieth century, and have been culpable for millions of deaths. Sadly, it is also hard to believe that David Cochrane’s Chicken Farmer could combine a plausible dramatic narrative with ribald farce and poetic dialogue. For this reason, the climactic tension of “the choice” that Himmler must make fails to materialise in a convincing way. Nonetheless, the production displays some effective writing and offers some worthwhile performances, especially notable given the potential for historical plays to descend into caricature.

            Cochrane’s most effective dramatic device is arguably Hitler’s position onstage. He remains upstage, often shrouded in darkness, mute and brooding over a revolver for most of the play. This acutely underlines the constant references to both his significance and his impotence with the coming end of the Nazi state, amplifying the attempts of all around him to manipulate their former Führer.

Rhys Jones offers us a repentant Albert Speer, played with a casual, almost flippant cynicism that contrasts favourably with the over-statement of David Cochrane as Goering or Dan Rawnsley as Dr Morrell. These characters appear indulgent, providing unnecessary and unwanted comic relief from the paranoiac intensity of the bunker.  Although the Blackadder-esque comedy is well played, its role in the play is difficult to fathom.

            Mona Schroedel-York and Roisin Watson, playing Magda Goebbels and Eva Braun, add a refreshing female dimension to the politics. Magda is portrayed as a scheming Lady Macbeth figure, which works well with Watson, who manages to evoke the only genuine pathos of the play as Eva Braun realises her powerlessness in the machinations around her. However, while Tom Garner’s role as Himmler is assured and at times impressive, it is let down by the failure of the plot to build a sufficient sense of climax in the character’s fate in which the audience can be swept up.

Alongside historical facts clunking awkwardly from the mouths of the characters, the playwright makes key cultural allusions, to Wagner and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire amongst others, and adroitly introduces classical references. Some of these sit oddly within the dialogue of the play; they are at times apt and profound but are often conspicuous and forced. The dialogue shifts from highly poetic language in antiquated syntax to very modern coarse language. Neither of these approaches is to be derided as a possible portrayal of the last days of the Third Reich, but jumping indiscriminately from one to the other leaves a credibility gap.
            Cochrane’s interpretation of the Führer’s bunker risks at times reducing the bitter struggle for power at the end of Third Reich to little more than the jostling for position in the Oxford Union, or worse, the backbiting and duplicity in the Big Brother House. However, he writes with some flair and expression, which need only to be reconciled with dramatic realism to allow his characters to come truly alive and the narrative to unfold more naturally.
  Chicken Farmer is running Tuesday 16th-Saturday 20th October at the OFS at 7:30, with a 2:30 Saturday matinee.
 

The problem with having a cold is that people don’t generally feel sorry for you. In fact, they tend to feel rather annoyed. Your anti-social symptoms don’t help matters – snivelling in the library or coughing through lectures are never going to win friends, but your depressed demeanour and tendency to whinge about your illness will probably make things worse.  However, if you are unlucky enough to have a genuinely bad cold, it can make you feel really washed out. As a true object of our sympathy therefore, Cherwell 24 presents you with a guide to some of the alternative remedies available.

My absolute hands-down favourite cure for a sore throat is blackberry vinegar.  It’s acidic yet sweet and though it sounds disgusting, it’s actually divine.  A perfect winter warmer, it sooths your throat and tastes surprisingly good. I think of it as a grown-up’s version of hot Ribena. However, it’s not that easy to get hold of.  My mum conjures it up using some ancient recipe she has, but I’ve yet to find any in Oxford. 

Instead you can always go for the traditional honey and lemon.  Simply squeeze half a lemon into a mug along with some hot water and two teaspoons of honey.  The honey actually works not only to sweeten the drink, but also to draw water out of the inflamed tissue in the throat, which reduces the swelling.  And you can add a glug or two of brandy or whisky, which will have a mildly numbing effect on your throat.

This week however, I branched out and tried ginger tea.  Very tasty and very simple.  Grate about ½ a teaspoon of ginger into a mug and pour in some hot water. Voila.  Add honey too if you want it sweet, although to be honest, once the ginger has been in a while it gets quite sweet anyway. This seemed to work quite well for me and apparently there is science behind it – I’m told that ginger contains things called ‘gingernols’ which are natural cough suppressants.

My favourite suggestion was to use a hair-dryer to kill the cold virus.  The idea is to point the hair-dryer at your face, turn it to a medium setting and inhale the warm air for about 5 minutes to allow the heated air to get up your nose and kill the virus.  I tried it, felt a bit silly, and stopped. Maybe other people will have greater success.

I’ve always found that putting a few drops of olbas oil on my pillow or on a handkerchief works quite well to ease a congested nose, but it’s no use for a runny nose.  Alas, I have yet to find a better remedy for that than the simple tissue. However, there are other exciting suggestions to help ease your nasal problems.  Anything with a bit of a kick in it should help – so try adding Tabasco or chilli flakes to your food, and apparently wearing damp socks to bed with warm woolly ones over the top works wonders.  I wasn’t convinced by this one. I stuck to the warm woolly ones.

If in doubt though, there are three basic maxims which are worth sticking to.  Firstly: “Make sure you drink plenty of fluids”.  This is what my mum always says and she’s a nurse, so she should know.  The next one is a piece of general folk-wisdom which says “feed the cold, starve the fever”.  So eat more when you have a cold.  And the last one is “a little bit of what you fancy does you good”. That is from my great-grandma. A wise woman indeed.