The annual pilgrimage that is the Bett show started on Wednesday 23rd January in a chilly London Docklands. It was my first visit and was an eye-opener to just how vast the EdTech sector now is - at last count £900m in the UK alone. No wonder the show is dominated by the leviathans of Silicon Valley.
A highlight was connecting again with the inspirational Joel Hellermark from Sana Labs. His presentation in the Bett Arena on the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning was very eloquent. The opportunities are without question and it will be fascinating to see where it settles down in the education sector as the ideas and technologies mature. I couldn’t hazard a guess at the moment; the data volumes are so mind boggling to comprehend and it leads me to my main point - where does the teacher sit in all this machinery?
Can the new tech compensate for poor teaching? Will it make up the gap for the continual leaking of highly-trained teachers from the profession? Will it replace and redefine the role of the teacher? In short, will learning and teaching be improved; it will certainly be more accountable, but will it be better?
At a recent conference in San Francisco, Reimagine Education (see blog) the main outtake was that the role for the teacher has never been more vital. The role will evolve from a sage imparter of knowledge to a wise coach, encouraging questioning and discovery. Knowledge and information retention are no longer the focus. Any smartphone can provide access to vast amounts of information in seconds and so the necessity is now the unlocking and nourishing of curiosity within the student – harnessing the capacity to solving problems.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” – WB Yeats
I think that by now you may have sensed my reticence in the arms race that Ed-tech seems to be becoming. How are teachers feeling about this? Does it help the outcomes for students?
The accepted view seems to be that the teacher is still the most important element in education. The central question must therefore be what can we do to support them, not what new tech or process can we inflict on them? Before procuring the latest miracle app or infrastructure, put the teacher at the centre of the plans and design around them.
