What’s On » Technology

TECHNOLOGY

Our key challenge: how do we maximise the positive use of Ed-Tech to prepare young people for wider opportunities? We’ll be looking at:

• Ed-Tech – what’s coming over the horizon?
• what will AR, VR and AI offer ?
• what can Ed-Tech do for developing our professional colleagues?
• the Digital economy – are we responding to it?

We’ve listed just some of our great contributors below with more to come, we’re also delighted that Tes Resources and The Education Foundation are working with us by curating sessions for this theme.

Our Contributors

Panel – Education Technology: What’s happening next?

Ed-Tech is one of the more remarkable developments impacting on teaching and learning at all stages of people lives. Our highly regarded panel will be discussing with Festivalgoers where Ed-Tech might be going and what further differences might it be making in the coming years

Panel – What are the limits of online learning?

Both teachers and students today face a future in which a major proportion of their learning will be online. Indeed, it is now possible for school staff to do all their professional development – and nearly their entire teacher training – using solely digital materials. What does this mean for teachers? And where is it still necessary for learners to interact with a tutor in real time – and in the real world?

Panel – What – if anything – can games designers teach teachers?

Each day millions of young people around the world learn new skills, willingly… playing computer games. The designers of those games are growing more and more adept at finding ways to teach players what they need to know so they can explore the complex worlds they have created, as well as to drip-feed new information. Are there any lessons here for schools? Or do games makers have it easy in comparison?

Panel – Can Augmented Reality ever be more than a classroom gimmick?

Ground-breaking work is going on in Sheffield to introduce new forms of Augmented Reality (AR) to education. This includes Twinkl’s creation of innovative forms of multiplayer AR for classroom use. Tes, meanwhile, acts as the official host for lessons for Google’s AR Expeditions. And the city itself will soon be transformed by AR’ City. But is there more to it than just a fun bit of novelty?

Panel – Is Artificial Intelligence leading us to education utopia… or dystopia?

A.I. has the potential to transform education, including by reducing teacher workload and predicting the information that will most help an individual student to understand a subject. But machine learning algorithms can have negative consequences as well – not least that they can perpetuate inequality. One educationalist has warned that “we are sleepwalking into the biggest danger than young people have faced”. So will A.I. lead us to an education utopia or dystopia – and how do we avoid the latter?

Panel – How can we ensure Ed-Tech is actually useful to schools?

The UK is a global leader in educational technology, and schools here alone spend more than £900m a year on it. But some kit that is only a few years’ old lies unused and dusty in school cupboards, while some software that made great promises has been swiftly abandoned by teachers. Indeed, some of the world’s biggest Ed-Tech projects have turned into massive flops. So how can we ensure that what is created for schools is actually useful? The obvious answer is “talk to teachers”, but what else needs to be done?

Panel – Why are schools expected to fix the tech gender gap? (with #WomenEd)

Last year only 10% of students studying computer science at A-level, and just 20% at GCSE, were female. What can schools do to help shift young women’s attitudes towards computing and technology? And is it fair to leave so much of the work on this to schools?