TEDxPolaris Global Academy

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Aeddan Shaw

  Teacher Trainer, Lecturer, Jagiellonian University

  The panic about AI in education rests on a misunderstanding of what teaching and learning actually are. Aeddan Shaw argues that the threat has been overstated — and that the way through is assessment built around the process of learning rather than the product it leaves behind. Less a bigger boat than a better way to sail.

• Antonina Janowska

  Student, Vice-Chair of Youth Council of Łomianki

  One argument told from two sides. Michał Cieśla — journalist, reporter and television producer, now spokesperson for the Szkoła w Chmurze Foundation — asks whether education should keep organising people around the system, or start organising the system around people. Antonina Janowska, a student and Vice-Chair of the Youth Council of Łomianki, answers from behind a café counter, where making coffee for ministers and CEOs taught her what no timetable could. If we would never insist that everyone wants the same cup of coffee, why do we serve every student the same cup of education?

• Julia Kozłowska

  Vocalist, Musical Theater Actress

  Showing up sounds like the least interesting advice available. Julia Kozłowska makes the case that it is the part that actually works — the unglamorous business of turning up again when nobody is watching and nothing is promised. Drawing on a year studying abroad in Florida, she argues that the future you say you want gets built almost entirely out of the moments you could have skipped.

• Michał Cieśla

  Journalist, Reporter and Television Producer

  One argument told from two sides. Michał Cieśla — journalist, reporter and television producer, now spokesperson for the Szkoła w Chmurze Foundation — asks whether education should keep organising people around the system, or start organising the system around people. Antonina Janowska, a student and Vice-Chair of the Youth Council of Łomianki, answers from behind a café counter, where making coffee for ministers and CEOs taught her what no timetable could. If we would never insist that everyone wants the same cup of coffee, why do we serve every student the same cup of education?

• Olgierd Borowiecki

  Cognitive Scientist

  I am a generalist developing broad and deep understanding of animal cognitive processes by combining terms from various disciplines into a coherent conceptual framework.

• Weronika Kaczor

  Student

  A game keeps you playing because it shows you the bar filling. Progress is visible, it is measured often enough to feel, and a failed attempt is treated as information rather than a verdict. Real life offers almost none of that by default — the feedback is slow, invisible, and easy to mistake for standing still. Weronika Kaczor makes the case for building the missing scoreboard yourself, and for checking it at an interval short enough to keep you in the game.

• Zoja Kacperczyk

  Student at Jagiellonian University

  Losing the ability to care is not a personal failing — it is a design outcome. The infinite scroll removes every natural stopping point, short-form video denies the brain time to redirect attention, and algorithms learn that outrage holds a viewer better than anything else. Susan Sontag warned that constant exposure to images of suffering makes the suffering feel too vast to act on. Zoja Kacperczyk argues that the feed has industrialised exactly that effect.