One of the biggest problems facing education technology today is the way in which existing learning materials are translated onto new technology platforms, without real consideration for the “baggage” technology brings along.
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At Edtech startup pitches, you often hear the phrase “we’re disrupting education”. But technology is not helpful when its main aim is to replace the teacher. Not only does that needlessly discard very valuable pedagogical knowledge, but students would also miss out on the special human-to-human skills teachers have when it comes to understanding them […]
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One of the easiest things to lose sight of in education is the original target you were trying to achieve. What are we trying to teach them, and how best should this be done? There are many reasons why this becomes marginalised: we assume it is obvious; inspectoral demands replace our objectives with visible metrics […]
Read moreWhat can be done to ensure that technology truly improves learning outcomes? Two thoughts for a complicated scenario. I started teaching in the pre-digital era, and moved into education technology as a professional when I discovered just how it could help improve the learning outcomes for my students. And these were analogue technologies that at […]
Read moreIn 1998 the dot-com bubble was expanding, the word “web” had slipped into common parlance, Windows 98 was being sold as an internet-ready piece of software and many of the students who entered our universities this year were born.
Read moreAfter years of introducing technology into classrooms around the world, and with previously unimaginable levels of internet access, there are few signs that technology is meaningfully impacting learning outcomes.
Read moreThere are few things which have the same potential to revolutionise teaching and learning as technological innovation. Many schools have been quick to adapt and integrate new technologies into the classroom. But with so many possibilities, the big challenge for schools has been how to harness them in ways that improve outcomes and don’t break […]
Read moreThe future classroom is alive with tech potential. Soon there will be talking (and singing?) robot teaching assistants helping children with their phonics and arithmetic in class. They will recognize each child by their unique voice pattern and adapt the training to their particular needs in real time: Jane needs more help with her five-times’ […]
Read moreThe problem with education technology is that it is seen by too many schools as a bolt on and not as an integral part of a student’s experience. Technology is not a panacea; it needs to be accompanied by a new triad relationship between teachers and students and the technology.
Read moreMyth 1: Jam Tomorrow “New technologies are being developed all the time, so the past history of the impact of ICT is irrelevant to what we have now or will be available tomorrow.” After more than fifty years of digital technology adoption in education this argument is wearing a bit thin. We need a clear […]
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