18 | ROUNDTABLE: A SUCCESS FOR EDTECH? | PRIMARY AND SECONDARY Read a related story: click here CON T RIBU T O RS:
What do you think have been the key technological developments in the education sector this year?
George Burgess, CEO and founder of Gojimo
George Burgess: For me it's twofold, the fi rst being the introduction of coding, which is obviously a massive change. A top-down, nationwide change like that impacts absolutely everyone. It has forced teachers and schools to learn about and implement coding classes much sooner than they would have done if it had been an optional subject. While this might cause some short-term diffi culty, it's certainly bet er for the next generation in the long term. For me though, the more exciting development
Shaun Eason, head of ICT at All Saints Secondary School, Dagenham
has to be the increasing role of mobile. We're seeing more and more schools introduce tablet programmes or allow their students to bring in their own mobile devices. At Gojimo, we’ve been producing mobile learning apps since 2009. Back then we were far too early. Students were hardly ready, let alone teachers and schools, but now things are changing and we're seeing the adoption rate rapidly pick up.
Martin Hamilton, futurist at Jisc
Shaun Eason: I think it’s defi nitely get ing kids doing more in terms of coding. It’s been very much a neglected area in education which needs at ention. Thankfully, the new Key Stage 3 curriculum has addressed this. We’ve already started this at All Saints and I was surprised at how much some students already knew. Kids ARE interested in this, it’s up to us as teachers to harness this enthusiasm and take it further. From a professional development point of view, it’s also a good development for teachers too and has defi nitely put something refreshing into the IT curriculum.
Simon Harbridge, CEO, Stone Group
Martin Hamilton: This was the year of Code Club’s volunteer-led after-school clubs in coding, but also the year that schools prepared to teach the UK government’s new Computing curriculum. It was the year that Microsoft legitimised the iPad as a serious professional tool by releasing a version of Offi ce for it, and the year that the Chromebook, Google’s Chrome browser-based 'appliance', started to make serious inroads into schools and colleges. These changes are symptomatic of a faster societal
pace of change driven by digital technology and the internet, and of the need for us to continuously update our technical skills to ensure that they remain relevant.
Simon Harbridge: 2014 has been an exciting time with an increase in tablet deployment, however it’s not about replacing old with new, but extending opportunities for young people, and helping schools with already stretched budgets get the most out of historic investments. The education sector is moving away from
interactive whiteboards, which sold like hotcakes two–three years ago, looking instead at large touchscreens. They provide bet er graphics and device compatibility, which could make them a seamless part of any lesson – they enable content to
be put on the big screen with the swipe of a fi nger.
James Penny: A key development this year has been the growth of the Cloud. Both public Cloud, like Google and Microsoft off erings, and the ability to use private Cloud storage to build a school network off site and therefore support the growth of BYOD. The government is pushing procurement through G Cloud and this will very quickly infl uence education. Add to this the digital by default approach from government where public services are being moved online, and we have an exciting set of developments for education.
Jon Silvera: From our perspective it has to be programming. Having been involved in computing since the early eighties, it has been a real eye opener to fi nd academia in the same position it was 30-something years ago. For the last 20 years, focus left teaching actual programming and moved on to using applications. It is criminal we now fi nd ourselves with severe skill shortages in an area we were once jointly responsible for creating.
Shaun Wilkinson: Printing, scanning and copying have developed incredibly quickly this year, in many
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