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What do you like about your role?
Helping teachers to improve learning, in so many varied ways, and knowing that young people will ultimately benefit. I get to work with some of the best and brightest people in the field of computing and technology in UK schools.
Share three predictions on the future of Edtech.
- Learning analytics in schools will become a reality, ending the guesswork of student targets and tracking.
- Small programmable devices and the IoT – Raspberry Pi and so on – will become ubiquitous in science and technology learning, not just computing.
- Teachers will become more demanding of educational robotics as the marketplace becomes ever-more crowded, looking for modularity, AI and improvements in function such as stronger actuators.
What technologies do you believe have the potential to transform the education industry?
I am reluctant to use the word ‘transformation’ as things tend to be incremental – education is a super-tanker and it’s difficult to turn corners sharply. However augmented, and mixed, reality has the potential to be really exciting in the classroom.
As we are celebrating out 5th anniversary of EdTechXEurope, we are looking at the key trends over the past 5 years in edtech. What would you say have been the key areas of change that are impacting edtech today? Anything unexpected that surprised you? Trends that were overhyped and never met their expected potential?
It’s all about the cloud! So many services have moved there including office and productivity apps, teacher-student work sharing and communications tools, programming tools, CAD…
I’m a little surprised that, given the huge boost given to them 5-10 years ago, virtual learning platforms haven’t become indispensable tools for teachers. The flipped classroom doesn’t seem to have gone mainstream in schools, leaving them as homework platforms and for ‘letters home’. More from a lack of imagination and resistance to change than a failure of technology!
Why is it important for all players in the edtech ecosystem to continuously connect, network and learn from each other?
To learn from history and not repeat the mistakes of the past – start-ups can be in particular danger of this, as they possess less ‘institutional memory’. Also, the best projects come from collaborations when ideas merge.
When you think about joining EdTechXEurope this year, what are you looking forward to? What makes you excited about our event in London?
Lots of views, lots of contexts – so I can’t wait to pick up good ideas from across the world.
Join Dave and our 100+ thought leader speakers at EdTechXEurope 2017 on 20 - 21st June 2017 - reserve your place now >>
Explore the agenda and see all of our confirmed 2017 EdTechXEurope speakers - go to agenda >>
