What do you like about your role?

Being at the heart of a successful business that is focussed on supporting the most important job in the world - teaching.

Share three predictions on the future of Edtech.

The sector will see a lot of VR products giving learners more immersive experiences to inform and inspire learning in the short term

In the next ten years China will emerge as the leader in AI learning products as the libertarian West struggles to resolve difficult policy questions around learner data privacy

Within five years it will become impossible to police the internet out of exams, policy makers will then have to allow search into exams and test cognitive understanding more thoroughly.  This revolution in assessment will create huge edtech opportunities 

What technologies do you believe have the potential to transform the education industry?

AI to enhance teaching; AI to disrupt assessment and ubiquitous live video streaming.

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?

5 years ago, the iPad was only one year old.  It was iconic in changing the game on intuitive user interfaces at a personal level.  This has had huge repercussions for both operating systems and hardware.  We have also seen the rise of video, led by the Khan Academy, and with it flipped learning which is a wonderful pedagogic innovation.

This has been related to the increasing ease with which we can make our own great content.  We can now take great photos and edit pretty good videos on phones.  I am not sure anyone saw how simple and powerful that is alongside the explosion of social media in sharing that.  This, in turn, is being used well by many teachers and learners but with little interference by education business.

Business is doing a lot with data, and the rise in appreciation of the importance of coding and data analytics is welcome.

I expected MOOCs to have a bigger impact, along with digital badges - neither universities nor awarding bodies have been hugely disrupted, yet!

Why is it important for all players in the edtech ecosystem to continuously connect, network and learn from each other?

Edtech always needs to worry more about ed and let the tech follow.  Education is all about connecting and learning from each other.  It is essential in our business.

When you think about joining EdTechXEurope this year, what are you looking forward to? What makes you excited about our event in London?

As always hearing from others what they want to show off, that can inspire and excite me in answering the challenges of teaching and learning.

Join Lord Jim 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 >>