 southwest. You are all really welcome to this very important event at the centre right at the heart of all aboard 2017. I know this is going to be a very inspiring and engaging event. I particularly welcome our student representatives. The national forums work would not really make much sense without students and without learners but also of course to our institutional representatives, , buddysgu, iawn, y gymryd tywol, a'i gael ffordd, a'i gael ddiddordebeth yng nghymru a'r drafod a'r ddechreuon a'i defnyddio sylfaeth ac ymgyrchol. Roedd ymyodol yn Allan ac yn y cyfnod i ddweud y ddweud am ddechrau ac ar siwr sydd yn adael y ddweud. Ie, fel y gweithbeth, mae'n cyfrifion wedi'i rhan felly Yn ystod y ddweud, oeddwn yn cymdeinigol o'r cyd-dweud o'r cyflwysoedd yma, a'r cyd-dweud i'r swyddoedd yma o'r ysgawdd, i'r ddweud, y cofnodau, ymddangos, ymddangos, ymddangos, ac yn ymddangos. Yma'r ystod, sy'n gweithio, sy'n cyfrifio'r Ffórwyr yma, yn ymddangos cyrraedd yma o'r dda i'r couldfodol yma o'r ffóc. A i'r byw o'r ddych yn dwylo, oherwydd, we have done for the last four years with the collaboration of very many people. Two things have become eminently clear. First, if people don't have the skills and confidence to engage with the digital world then many of the most impactful aspects of living and learning with digital will always remain unavailable to them. So, that's really important. It's common sense, but it's coming through in all sorts of ways. mae'r amser genniadol yn gweithio digital, ac mae'r amser genniadol yn gweithio digital wedi bod yn gweithio. Yn gweithio'r amser, ond ar y cyfnod erbyn i gyd am ddweud y gweithio'n gweithio ar gweithio'r ar y cwntae mae hynny'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ar gweithio'n gweithio. Yn amser, yna wedi gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweld nid o ddweud â yna'r ysgrifennu ymgweithio yma, of well-being, of identity, and of course of skills. And it is in the context of these kinds of insights that this week has come into being. What's utterly clear also is that we have immense curiosity. We have appetite. We see the potential and we want to exploit it. And that's true of every group that we've talked to and of every kinds of conversations that we've had in relation to this challenge. But as the recent DESI survey shows, Ireland is doing very well in some dimensions of embracing the potential of technology, but we still have a very long way to go and one of those areas is in skills building. This week, taken together, is designed to be a massive, collaborative, inclusive step in the right direction. We cannot expect our higher education learning environments to benefit from all the wonders of digital potential if we don't build skills and confidence in our communities, in our families, among parents, among primary and secondary schools, and in further education contexts. We're all in this together. And it's a source of huge pride to me to see that everybody knows that. And this week, everyone is acting on it. We have over 300 free events this week alone being hosted all over the country and helping us all to become more familiar with, more engaged in, and more confident about different kinds and levels of skill that real digital engagement requires. Everybody needs to be part of this and the digital world is moving fast. So this incredible movement is calling on everyone to jump on. I think it's extremely apt that it's called All A Board and it's based on a very sound conceptualisation and an imaginative one that relate to the whole diversity of skills and types of engagement required. It is so appropriate that the All A Board project funded by the National Forum with leadership from within the education sector has led the conceptualisation and realisation of this series of events. And it is even more apt that I now have the privilege of welcoming our keynote speaker for today, for not just today but for All A Board 2017 and for digital learning more broadly. Along with an illustrious, creative and ground-breaking career, Lord David Putnam has been an activist for education, a voice for equality in education and engaging particularly as an advocate of the transformative potential of digital technology. As well as a member of the House of Lords, David was Ireland's, is Ireland's first digital champion and served as an active and hard-working member of our National Forum's board. Many of you will have also seen his leadership in the recent RTE programme making Ireland click and its accompanying website, which itself has played a supportive and empowering part in building Ireland's digital capacity. We have benefited in so many ways from David's enthusiasm and conviction. As a board member, I remember so many moments in our early deliberations when David challenged, entertained, supported, engaged, but most of all I think he helped us to be courageous and creative when it comes to this challenging enhancement agenda. And that mattered very much at the time when the National Forum was taking shape and it matters now and it's always going to matter. It gives me great pride and pleasure to welcome to the podium Lord David Putnam. Thank you, Sarah, very, very much indeed. That was incredibly generous. Several things. First of all, this venue. For me it's rather, it's not only beautiful, it's also quite intimidating because I've sat in the audience listening to some really amazing speakers and the very fact of standing here and thinking, oh my God, I'm really trying to match something that is probably well beyond me. It is genuinely intimidating. Secondly, I wouldn't want you to think, I hope, that this is like a PowerPoint presentation. The truth is, for years and years and years I spoke literally glued to a text. I mean I was so neurotic, I used to literally write in in red pauses so I could pause. And I realised that, God knows what I was doing with the audience, but I was standing metersly. So I came to the conclusion that I spent 30 years as a movie producer. I do believe in the moving image and what I was discovering teaching was that for the most part my students, certainly to my students, would remember bits and pieces of imagery more clearly and for longer than frankly my text. So I just decided to chuck away the pauses and the blue text and go for what I'm familiar with. So in one sense I apologise because it does look a bit PowerPoint-y but I promise you it's better than that. The other intimidating factor is that at least four people in this room have seen at least four or five of these slides and I apologise to them in advance as well. But I think they work and they're relevant. Start here. Last year, about this time actually, I spent a morning with President Tsing of China and an interesting man with a vision of his own country but what I feel is, and this is what he said, cannot dress up other people's yesterdays as our own tomorrows. It isn't just true with China. I think it's true of all of us. So it seems to be a very, actually rather profound statement that we are tempted to look back and God knows this is true of Britain at the moment and it's got everything to do with driving the Brexit instincts. It's looking back to a world that probably never existed and thinking that security lies there. It's a very, very, very, I think, bad idea. Sarah mentioned the click-nation programme that I did last year for RTE. So I'm going to show you one, I promise you only one, one very short clip from it which caused some consternation and which probably needs some justification. You ready for this? There's something like 70% of the jobs that you'll be doing 15 years from now do not at present exist. We don't even know what they are. So you need to be collaborative, flexible, smart and absolutely able to adapt to change. So what I think the school is trying to prepare for, I hope, and in fact I know it, is a world of constant change. I'm 75 years old. I'm learning stuff every single day and I do it by teaching. Now my father had retired 10 years earlier. I've got another 10 years of me at least. Some of you in this room will be working at age 100. I promise you, I promise you. So just think about this. It's a very, very, very different gig. What the school is doing is preparing you for that, which is fantastic. The point obviously kids look to me in a certain degree of incredulity. Maybe it won't be their generation of work at 100 but I bet a bottom dollar that their grandchildren will, for sure. And if it seemed appropriate, and it is appropriate, to go to learn to be a learner, forget leaving university out of this, to be a learner for a dozen years in order to work 30 or 40 years, why wouldn't it be appropriate to be a learner for 25 years in order to work for 60 years? And these, I think, are the kind of equations we're going to have to start getting our head around. And when I say 25 years, I don't mean 25 years in one slug. I mean maybe 15 years followed later by five, followed later by another three. I do think the pattern of learning will have to be dramatically altered. Not in my lifetime, but it seems reasonable to at least start that discussion. Over 50 years ago, Jean Piaget said this, and I actually again think it's more true now than it was the day that he said it. Principal goal of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done because there's no point in repeating what other generations have done because, as I think I accurately just said, most of the jobs that most of these kids will be doing, we as yet don't fully understand or acknowledge. This is self-evident, but weirdly, not entirely, I don't think, understood. The first step in solving a problem is recognising there is one. I think there's been an extraordinary temptation here in Ireland as much as anywhere else to pretend there isn't that bigger problem. Sarah used the expression quite rightly that Ireland's doing quite well by most measures. As I'll say again a little later on, I think quite well is a kind of disaster really because as long as you think you're doing quite well, you don't feel the need to do very well. And I think we're moving into a global environment in which, unless you're doing at least very well, you're probably slipping behind. I just spent four years working in Southeast Asia. The appetite for education and the appetite for change and the appetite to be part of the 21st century in that part of the world is something that we in Western Europe have not yet fully got our heads around. A film that influenced me last year, the American film, I'm going to show a very short clip of it. I thought, nailed the problem precisely, and I can't do better than this certainly in the space of one minute. Truthfully, you're building your character right now, you're building that perseverance in that sense of I want to do my best. Now, freeze, look at that face right there. I know that face. That face is saying, this is bullshit. This whole thing called school is bullshit. The idea of enduring the drudgery of standardized tests, traditional homework, lectures, will build the kind of character in them that will one day lead to a happier life. May no longer be true. Consider this economist out of MIT who argues that kids who will go on to do well in school and graduate from college won't necessarily be able to find a job. Most parents today grew up in a world which saw the U.S. economy grow, and median income grow with it. And that's always been true until here. Curiously, around the late 90s, the economy had grown, but middle class income had not. In essence, the U.S. economy is now able to produce more wealth while hiring fewer and fewer people. And this is troubling. And it is troubling. And I think it's beginning to seriously trouble the students in our schools and certainly the graduates and undergraduates in our universities. I spent a good chunk of the last six weeks as it happened around universities. I've been in the West Country in Bath in Bristol. I was up in the Northeast and I was also been at Oxford and Cambridge. And every single discussion I had in the higher education sector, every discussion brought up the issue of mental health. Every single vice-charts that I talked to said it was top of their problem at present, dealing with mental health issues among their graduates and undergraduates. So I can't think about this for a bit. I think there's two possible, there's not a lot of reasons, but two that occur to me. One is, I think we're sending these young people off on a journey effectively with no map. They read the media, they're invaded by the culture and they can't really see what the direction is. So I feel that our job, more than anything else at present, is literally to try and create a map for them that's recognisable and which they can gather around and maybe even add to and improve upon. The question I keep being asked on my by my own students in a sense is this. They don't ask it in precise terms, but it's effectively what's coming through. Who am I? Who am I? What are my opportunities? What's going to happen to my generation? What's my future going to look like? These are really real issues. And what I've identified is, and I'm not the only one, that it is the gap between expectation and reality that causes a lot of this unhappiness because it's probably the best measure we have of happiness. If, as is happening in many parts of the world, particularly in the US, the gap between the expectations that they're encouraged to have of their lives and the reality of what they're doing, if that gap is seen to be increasing, that can only subscribe to greater unhappiness. And the weird thing is, certainly for my generation, most of the second half of the 20th century, the 20th century, was trying to close the gap between expectation and reality. Who consciously were trying to, as it were, keep expectations at a reasonable level and close the gap of reality towards those expectations? That ambition, I fear, has been, as it were, abandoned. And the question that I find isn't asked enough, and I try to prompt this, but it doesn't always, it's not always successful, is a very simple one, and it's odd that it doesn't get asked more often. Why are you interested in the things you're interested in? If I'd been asked that question aged 15, 16, I think I would have made a lot fewer blunders when I was seeking how to embark on the next phase of my education. In my case, it was going to night school, because no one ever actually asked me why I was interested in things that interested me. I knew what interested me, but why was never really probed and pushed. One thing that I did know, and was taught, was that creativity, and it was my great good luck that I ended up in this particular world, that creativity is a muscle, and that muscle, like any other muscle, is exerciseable, and you can improve and improve and improve upon it. What was less obvious was that whilst improving on that muscle, and dealing with the imagination of those, the key component was resilience. So another question I think we have to ask ourselves is, how good are we at teaching resilience? How seriously do we take the purpose of teaching resilience? And as a result, how resilient are the young people that we are turning out of our schools and universities? Because if they're not, that's another reason why they're going to find the 21st century incredibly challenging and maybe even difficult. One of the things I've tried to do, and again, I suggest anyone interested in long term education needs to do, is try to get young people to say, no, where is it you're heading, and do you have some sense of how important it is to have a sense of direction and to get there? Most young people at some point, or other, want to be on the stage. Now, on the stage can mean anything. It's been on a stage, I'm on a stage right now. Wanted to get there. Getting onto the stage can be difficult, but it is very, very important to have a sense of where it is. So I mentioned earlier that I get some success out of using clips and bits and pieces to remind people of the points I'm trying to make. This is one of the more successful, I'll explain after the clip, when I'm talking about where you're headed, how do you intend to get there? I use this clip. Mike, long enough, let's do it, Tom. Come on, mate! Here, Mr Shryff, again! Run, run, run! No, it's not an exit. It's not an exit. We've got one on exit. No, that's true. Oh, this way, I'll show that. Yeah, come on, mate, it's not my mistake. Wait. This looks familiar, though. Listen. Pretty bad. You know, he should be here. Right straight through this door here, down the hall, turn right, and then there's a little jog there, about 30 feet, jog to the left. We don't have time for that. Go straight ahead. Go straight ahead, turn right in the next two corners, and first door, you sign, authorise, personnel only, open that door, that's the stage. You think so? You authorise, you bring musicians, aren't you? Thank you, thank you very much. Rock and roll! Rock and roll! So, what happens is, when I'm having a conversation with them about motivation and things like that, all I ever say to them is, hello, Cleveland! Hello, they know exactly what I'm talking about. They got it, that they'd better find their way to the stage or they're not going to make much of a show. And I think that's, to an extent, true of their lives. A colleague of mine, former colleague of mine, Simon Jenkins, said this in the garden a couple of years ago. In regards to today's education, we are where Madison was in days of bleeding and cupping. We're working for a massive breakthrough, and he's right. Now, the next three slides on the show I've shown many, many, many times, but I still show them, because, funnily enough, it's the one point of reference that we seem to come back to, and it works. So this is an image, a photograph of the man who was the world's greatest surgeon in 1915. This man, during World War I, a French surgeon, he's actually a Russian surgeon, worked in France, saved more lives than anyone else, taught more doctors that saved lives and actually changed the whole nature of triage and medicine at that point. A really, truly great man. If you took that great man and put him in an operating theatre 100 years later, there is nothing what so ever he could do. Absolutely nothing. His entire skill base would have been eradicated by a combination of science and technology. He would be interested, he'd probably ask very good questions, he'd hang around, he'd mop some brows, make a cup of tea, but there's nothing he could actually contribute to the practice of surgery. His skills would have been obviated. Now, you take her, a teacher from any point in the 20th century, put her in a classroom and in most subjects, not all, but in most subjects, she could teach what we would all absolutely recognise as a lesson. And the big question that hangs there is, how is it possible that in 100 years the practice of teaching and learning has advanced over a little, whereas the practice of medicine has been totally revolutionised? I do have my own answers, one of which is that science continually takes chances. Basically, scientists do stand on the shoulders of giants and are urged to discover new ways of doing things, whereas I think the world of teaching and learning has always tended to default back to what works because of the risk that you might just get it wrong. So there are explicable reasons, but I'm not sure they're good enough. I would argue that the key for us as teachers is we have to become better learners. If we can become better learners, we're likely to become better teachers, and to me that's a fundamental component of it. In 1992, I set out on a journey with two other men, Stephen Heppel and Ken Robinson, because we believed the education system was in crisis. Not many people at the time particularly agreed, but we thought that the opportunities are afforded by new technology and the opportunities are afforded by the new type of jobs, the job market, which was altering quite dramatically and rapidly at the time, meant that things had to change. If you said to Ken or Stephen or I at the time that 25 years later we would achieve so little, none of us would have believed you. I think we would have assumed that we'd be where we are now within 10 years and moving them well beyond that. So in a sense, this is three very disappointing guys who've reached a point where we just haven't moved with anything like the speed. I worked for someone when I was 20, 21, who was a very tough taskmaster, and I was very worried that I was going to get the sack. The people around me were extraordinarily bright, hardworking, and I just wasn't sure I was doing well enough. And I went to see this boss of mine, his name was Colin. And I said, I think I probably called him sir. I said, you know, I'm so conscious of how well the company is doing with the ad agency. I wasn't sure that I'd be doing my best work. And I started trying to explain my way out of my concerns and he stopped me. He said, sit out of your mind. He said, why do you think you're here? I said, well, you know, you interviewed me three times. You must have seen something. No, no, he said not at all. He said, you are here for one reason, and one reason only. You are here to amaze me. Your job is to amaze me. You are not amasing me. Go away and start amasing me and you don't have to worry about your job. If you don't amaze me, you should worry. And I went back to my little cubicle, wept. And I must have done something right because I didn't get the sack. But that piece of tough love was incredibly important to me. And I refer back to that point that Sarah made about Ireland doing quite well. Ireland is doing quite well, but Ireland is not amasing me. And Ireland is not amasing the rest of the world. Ireland is not even amasing Northern Europe. And we need to start amasing the world because we do have the gifts and we do have the talents and we do have the scale and the benefit of size that we could be amasing. We're just not amasing. And we need to challenge ourselves to become amasing. Go back to 1984 because I enjoyed watching this clip. The level of ambition was pretty limited, particularly, I have to say, at the time, among goals, where the digital world, the world of computers, was seen as pretty rarefied. What do people think about the micro-revolution? On the back row there... I just don't see the point in them, I have them. I don't see any reason that you need something to look after all your memories for you and keep all the information that you need to find out. So you don't see it as an important career, maybe, to get involved in that kind of science? No. I think that the computers are just a phase that people are going through, especially with the computer games. Well, for work it's good for storing information, but the games, I think it's just a phase people all go through and they'll get tired of it as skateboards. You play computer games? No. You have a computer? No, I haven't. You take computer studies? No. Is that out of choice? Yes. I could take it in school, but I just haven't got an interest in it. To get a job you need to know how to use a computer, but it's the computers that are taking away other jobs, so it's just like a catch-22 situation, it's not really getting anywhere. But might you not help yourself by being able to handle a computer? It might help in the home, like... I don't know, because they say it'll be shopping using a computer later, but not at work, I don't think. Not at work? No. Now, those women are now 44, 45, 46. I wonder what their attitude to computers is now, and I wonder how they feel about their kids bringing home the iPad. It's not that long ago, where that was a common view. I mean, that wonderful line, I think they're a little bit like skateboards, is a fad, is really quite amazing, and that is literally only 30 years ago. So we are enjoying or living through a genuine digital revolution, and we're living in a digital world. That digital world is significant. I made this slide up of things that we might have used at that point, when those girls were talking, the sort of kit we would have put together to inform ourselves, to get on with our daily lives, music, time, literary time, recording cameras, information. Now, that group of things there would have cost at least €5,000 to put together. At least €5,000. Pretty complicated, pretty bulky, around €5,000. We've now reached the point where it's all on there, the whole lot, and it costs €500. So cost barrier has decreased, access to information has greatly increased, and the world, quite literally, is at our fingertips. The issue really is whether we've grasped that and whether we've spent too much time dwelling on the deficit side and not enough on the positive side. Now I'm not pretending, and I mustn't pretend, that this is all perfect, that the digital world is always perfect, as illustrated by this. So the question we asked ourselves is, how would it be if things didn't have to be the way we know they actually are, yes? What would a world look like if it was different? The whole point about intuitive technology, as opposed to intelligent technology, which is basically just lights going on off in toilets, yes? The whole point about intuitive technology being that it comes preloaded into the building itself, OK? Welcome to your virtual PA. One unified system that changes the game integrates your world, syncs you with everything and everyone around you without you doing anything, syncs you to the BBC itself in real time, wirelessly, continuously, and in real time. 11 years in development, guys and everyone, I give you syncopatico. Fucking hell! It does happen, and it's happened to me, and of course, from a teaching and learning point of view, it's catastrophe because you've lost the class, you've lost that hour, you've lost that... you've lost dignity as well, with my experience. So it's not a perfect world. On the other hand, it is an irreversible world and it's a world we're moving into. A clip I'd like to show you now is interesting because nothing you're about to see is science fiction. Every single thing you're going to look at exists. In some cases, it's already in the workplace. In other cases, it will be in the workplace by the time this generation of young people in secondary education have entered the workplace. So this is the world that they will be familiar with and have to be familiar with in order to get the jobs that they want. If you want evidence of the pace of change, three years ago, I read The New York Times every day, The New York Times had one video story normally in each edition. Today, there's never less than 20. In fact, every single important story, when you click onto it, you will go to a video. To the extent it's almost quite concerning because it's possible we'll reach a point where a judgement would be made about the importance of news depending on the quality of the video, which would be a very, I think, retrograde step. But this stuff is happening at an amazing speed. One of the jobs I've enjoyed the last five, six years is I chaired the Times Educational Supplement Advisory Board and I learned a lot because the amount of data that comes into us is quite extraordinary. And Sarah, certainly Sarah and Terry know, I use this data quite a lot. The really remarkable thing was that in 2008 we made a decision to use our web presence and the reach of our web presence to encourage teachers to talk to each other and to share lessons and lesson plans and ideas. It took off in a way that none of us had ever, for one moment, expected. It's quite extraordinary. To the point that it's quite a lot, very nice to be talking this month. Later this month, we will host the one billionth conversation teacher to teacher. The one billionth. I mean, it's a kind of unthinkable number. It's operating in 130 countries now. Ireland is particularly good in terms of particularly good in this area, which is the sharing of information. But here's a really interesting thing about Ireland. Because we know who these teachers are. We know when they do it. We know that Sunday night peaks because they suddenly panic because something's going to do on Wednesday. They're not ready for. But what's extraordinary is, in most cases in Ireland, the teachers do not let the principals of their schools know they're doing this. It's their secret. And that, to me, illustrates something quite concerning because clearly what ought to be happening is there ought to be conversations in the classroom about what they're learning, how they're learning, who they're talking to, and indeed where the best information is coming from. It just isn't happening. It's not happening because somehow teachers either feel guilty or feel that in some way they'd be criticised for looking outside of the school environment for information. And that's a worry. But what this is, this is a teacher-led revolution, which is interesting because you would assume and hope that it might be a departmental-led revolution or it might be an institutional-led revolution. The truth is it's a bottom-up revolution and maybe that's a very good thing. The other area which is remarkable is TED. I did a count-up the other day. There are over 3,000 TED talks talking about teaching and learning, improvements in teaching and learning, inspirational. In many cases, it's very inspirational of discussion about teaching and learning. But what's amazing is the long tail. Some of them, like Ken Robinson's, have over 30 million hits. Most of them have got well short of 10,000, and yet some of those are among the best. I had five wonderful, wonderful years at the Open University where we developed OpenLine. And OpenLine, I think, is a valuable tool and has proved to be a valuable tool and is growing quite quickly. Here is a little note. This is what's happening. These stats I'm about to offer for you are over a year out of date, I'm afraid. 54 partner institutions, 150 courses, almost 2 million registered learners, actually now well over 2 million, studying 3.5 million courses in 190 countries. Over half the students taking their very first online course, 43 are in full-time work, 60% are female and 60% are outside the UK. This is a significant success, and one of the things I love, I've always hated this phrase, the sense that there's learning for learning's sake. There's always somehow or another, there's a purposeless element to it. I remember having a fierce argument with a politician in the UK who said to me, oh, Open University, oh, that's what does those history lessons for ambassadors' wives, as if somehow that was a purpose to you. I've never forgotten this. It's a ridiculous notion. We've managed to defeat the idea of learning for learning's sake, and in fact, the learning is very purposeful. I want to give you just an illustration number, it's a three-minute clip, but it's a very good one. We did a joint venture, and do a joint venture, with the European Space Agency. There's a purpose to this because there are areas of real shortage, as we know in Ireland, data analytics, a real shortage. So the purpose here was to encourage people interested in a variety of things, climate change, data analytics space, to hook into a very short programme and see where it went from there. This was a particularly successful hook. I guess in the online, you could almost call it clickbait, but it was more than that. Welcome to the first Isamu Connors observation from space. We are really excited you are on board with us for this journey. Earth orbiting satellites are completely revolutionising the picture we've got of our home planet. They're showing not only its great beauty, but also its complexity. We've seen from the vantage point of Voyager 1 in the outer reaches of the solar system how small and vulnerable is our planet in the dark blackness of space. Satellites around the earth, however, are giving us the fine detail that we need to understand the big problems and challenges we face in climate change and environmental change and the rapid advances in technology are now giving us a much more powerful and comprehensive set of measurements than we've ever had in the past. We are in the midst of a data revolution. With the launch of the Sentinel data we will get sustained observation for the next decades. And this observation will be really important to better understand our planet, understand processes, but also support decision making related to climate change and monitoring of the environment. The intention of this course is to excite you about earth observation, its power and its value. It will set out the fundamental principles by which we make measurements from space. It will tell you about how those measurements are used. It will show you the kind of problems that earth observation can be fundamental to solving and most of all it intends to be inspiring and informative. I hope it will be a great opportunity for you to discover the value of earth observation, how we can use it in science but also to support decisions related to climate change. We want to expose you to the beauty of the data why it's fascinating. You will learn about how to use the data in context with other data, how to process them and how to make the most of it. And we hope this course will bring you a new perspective on this technology. Though looking forward to working with you in the next few months and better understand how to make the most of these data. So it's a five week course, two to three hours a week, not exactly intimidating, the purpose of it being to get people to get a taste of what was out there and what they could learn. It was hugely successful in terms of directing people off to other longer courses and from that indeed on to master's courses. We learned a lot. One of the reasons I think it was effective was because we had access to, because of the nature of the subject, technology and really wonderful images. So we actually do something that was colossally professional and in that sense inspiring. And as I see it, one of the challenges for all of us is to use that level of excellence, of imagery in other subject areas to gather together material and be prepared to spend the kind of money that was required to inspire and get people to sign up. The big challenge is this battle, if you like, between technology and empathy because technology without empathy I personally convinced can lead to a real form of sterility. But technology that enhances empathy can be life changing. So I hate the word, but our aim genuinely is to create sympathy, a different type of attitude to technology. I live in West Cork, and I teach from a studio which I thoroughly enjoyed. Now what we've done as a result of that studio is in Skibri we've created an entrepreneur centre with a thousand mix of broadband and encouraging young people into it. I was talking yesterday to Bill Lau, the founder, creator of Coddo Dojo, pointing out to him and he affirmed this better than I could have expected. I said, what's amazing is for several years we've been running the Coddo Dojo courtesy of a local hotel who've loaned us their ballroom. And we had 14 or 15 mostly boys coming to that Coddo Dojo. The day that we opened the Ludgate centre that number jumped to 65. So I've talked to Bill about why that might be and we both agreed it's to do with having a professional environment in which to work. It was exactly the same as me called creating a professional environment in which people learn sports. Suddenly you feel as though you're being taken seriously, you're in an environment that takes you seriously and changes and Bill was saying something very interesting. Whenever Coddo Dojo's are formed in business environments, i.e. a business is good enough to loan the premises, they're successful, whereas when they're offered churches or when they're offered schools, it doesn't work. Kids do not want to go back into school in the evening to learn technology, especially if that school isn't seen as technologically sharp and well-equipped. So we're learning a lot in Skim from having access to very, very good technology. Ken, that's the centre and it is good. Ken Robinson we sort of started with. Ken was 33 million. I've got this other 33.5 million hits on his TED talks, quite astounding. So it seems reasonable in a way to give him almost the last word. Education, real education is messy and any attempt to standardise it through federal or state governments or bureaucratic committees will lead to a system that ignores this one irrefutable fact. Education is a complex human system. It's about people and people are natural creatures. We're organic creatures. We grow and we evolve and we change and if you have an industrial metaphor in your head then you're led into the sort of language that we now use about standardisation and the thing is it's much more like gardening than engineering. If you're a gardener you don't make it grow when the plant grows itself. You don't kind of attach the leaves and paint the petals and screw in the roots. I mean the thing grows itself if you create the right conditions. My job, as he thinks, feels and I feel is to create the right conditions to advance the whole world of education to meet the challenges that are done and question the faces in the next two, three, four decades. Last word for me is a sort of self-justification. I'm a child of the sixties, unapologetically. I've given up trying to apologise for the mistakes that I've made in the sixties because we've got a lot of things right. One of the great heroes of my generation was Eldridge Cleaver and he had gone to be part of the problem. Only recently did I realise that Abram Lincoln 105 years earlier had said almost exactly the same thing. You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. I would argue that there has been enough evasion in the world of education and only been very recently have we understood the nature of our challenge, nature of our responsibility and the nature of our opportunity. Thank you very much for listening to me.