 Hello, my name is Will Ellis and I work for an organisation based in Brussels called European School Network. So this course is looking at the future classroom but what we're not trying to do on this course is predict what the future might be like. That's notoriously difficult. What we're looking at is how the world is changing at the moment, the current trends in society and technology and what impact that may have on learning and teaching in the future. I work in a room here called the Future Classroom Lab. It's full of technology but it isn't meant to be an exact replica of what we expect a future classroom to look like. It's meant to provide inspiration and ideas about how to use technology and that's what we're trying to do on this course but we're very much focused on what is good pedagogical practice and how the technology can support that. Now I was a teacher for 15 years before working here and when I started in education we really didn't have very much technology at all. I think we had a photocopier, there was always a big queue for that so I didn't get to use that a lot. I had one computer and a staff room with about six other members of staff so again I didn't get a lot of use of that. During my period in teaching however there was a big change in the implementation of technology. I work in the UK and the UK government at the time invested a lot of money in interactive whiteboards and other technologies. Right now there's a big explosion in the use of personal mobile devices and arguably most people have some personal internet connected device of their own. So inevitably this should and possibly is having an impact on education and that's what we're going to be exploring more in this course. At the heart of this course is a question, what does the future classroom look like? The course is delivered over six modules where we explore that question in lots more detail. During those modules we'll introduce experts in particular topics to share their knowledge and information with you and we'll also have various tutorials into new technologies which you might find useful in the classroom so you can pick up some new skills and practical ideas. In the first module we think about the classroom of the past and the classroom of today. We also introduce the concept of 21st century skills and we ask how these skills might impact on teaching and learning in the future. In the second module we introduce Edger Vista. This is a toolkit we've created to help you create visions for the future classroom. In module three we look at some of the technology that can bring innovation to the classroom. We then look at how we can use this technology to turn our vision into a reality. In the fourth module we bring together some of the technology we've looked at to give with our vision for the future classroom and our understanding of 21st century skills. We combine this to develop some learning activities to bring innovation into the classroom. In module five we look at some of the learning activities we've created and we put them together to form a learning story which we can then test in the classroom. Finally in module six we ask the question have you seen the future classroom yet? Everything you've covered in this course 21st century skills, learning activities, innovation, technology should give you some kind of view or understanding about the direction the education is going and where the future classroom will be.