 So, first we'd like to welcome you to the ISTEEN Education Conference and first would you like to give us a brief hint about what BACTA is and what does it do in the UK? BACTA is the government's lead agency on the use of technology in education. So its function really is to try and help government with its overall strategy, with its policy, but also then to take that policy and implement it and to help schools then be able to understand so it for example will set standards in technical standards but also pedagogical standards. It will provide information for teachers so it does both the strategic level but also right down into the classroom to be able to help people as to how they ought to use the technology that will make a real difference. A lot of research put into that to make sure that what we are saying is actually backed up by real evidence in practice. Okay, so the first thing you mentioned in the presentation was that future is already here but it's not widely distributed so comparing the developed world with the Arab world how do you think this statement applies to the developing versus the developed countries? Is it true that developing countries are not having the resources or having not having the skills or the knowledge or what's the situation as you view it? I think it's not just a comparison between the developed and developing countries. It's very much within developed countries as well. So I think what I've been trying to describe today is that the way in which it impacts in education is very much down to not just the technology but also the teacher, the leadership in the school and the system as a whole. So it brings those things together. Now that can be quite easy for some developing countries to actually implement quicker and in a more structured way than some of the developed countries. So what we will have in the UK for example, although all of our schools are engaged in this program, some of the description that I was talking about in terms of our leading schools were probably got about 20% of our schools at that level. So we still have a significant challenge to get the 80% up to the level of that 20%. At the same time that's about taking people on a journey. That journey can equally be a journey for developed countries just as much as for developing countries, just as much as for the developed countries. So I don't necessarily see it as a significant issue that we're all starting from different places. I think people can move faster. I think there is a challenge in terms of resources that are available for many countries actually making those resources available is really difficult. It's a decision about where you put your sort of finances and sort of how you see education. Certainly one of my other messages today was very much that education is part of the key to the future economy. So the way in which we invest in our education will determine how many resources we have in the future in terms of the economic standing of the country. So I still see education as really important in that agenda but I recognize that for some countries investing in the sort of computer infrastructure is more challenging than for others. Some people may view that ICT being integrated in the educational system may eliminate or lessen the impact of the human touch or the teacher's role in the education process. So what do you think when ICT is fully integrated in an educational system whatever the country is whether the role of teachers and the human interaction between teachers and students will be affected negatively or positively in this area? Teachers will be more important than ever before. The role of a teacher will change but the need for the teacher is greater. The experience that you would have is teachers really have to understand education and the education process. In the past we've had a situation where teachers may well have known more than the pupil. So the process of education has been a simple transference of I have knowledge I'm going to pass it on to you and you put that knowledge on. The challenge in the future is that that knowledge is available. That information is available. However the understanding of it the ability to help people get the concepts, the ability to know how a child is progressing and what the input should be that moves that child on and their understanding of how people learn that is really, really important and more important in the future than ever before. So the role of the teacher will change but the need for the teacher and indeed the skills of the teacher are going to be even more significant than they are currently. Your take on the digital natives concept was really interesting because you argued that being for a manager, for a school manager to be a digital native could have a negative impact because he thinks that he's not subject to other, I mean suggestions from younger generations who can have their input but he disregards them. So can you tell us about your argument about this concept and make it clear to the people? Well I think the challenge is that young people come with a perception of what's available to them and what they can do. So the ability, let me take a very simple example. Young people today will expect to collaborate. So if you're doing a particular piece of work at home, you may well talk to your friends about it, you could go on to the internet, you could get in more information, you could go on to one of the social networking sites, you could share with colleagues in different parts of the world even about what you're doing on your particular project. Now a traditional model within a school of an assessment process would say if you talk to other people you're cheating. Now that's fine in the sense that if what you want to test is the ability for someone to have memorised something for themselves then absolutely that's the way forward. But if you then ask what is the skills necessary in industry, they will talk about teamwork, they'll talk about the development of critical thinking, they'll talk about the ability to be able to criticise others positively and to receive criticism and adapt that in your own world. Now if we in education are trying to develop that process and enable people to move on to that, we have to allow people to do that within our school system. Now it isn't difficult to allow them to do it because they do it all the time. It's only difficult if you think that you are the only person in control rather than letting people actually sort of be able to have that. So again the role of the teacher in that situation it's not just about the teacher having all the power, all the control and passing on that information, it's about the teacher enabling that learning to take place and the discussions that may go with that and that's a big challenge. One of the research results you found that ICT can help improve attitudes and behaviours, so can you elaborate on this point? The research that we've done looked at a whole range of different learners using technology and how they would sort of bring that back into the classroom and their knowledge. We've got lots of examples of children being more motivated to learn and obviously people who are more motivated tend to pay more attention. There's lots of evidence to show that children stay on task longer and lots of evidence to show that people who stay on task longer actually achieve better. So the evidence would suggest that the use of technology enables young people to engage better with the learning than would otherwise be the case and because they're engaged in it they behave better. I mean anecdotally we've got a number of things that would illustrate that. I mean in one school that I used to advise in Birmingham in the UK had a breakfast club for its teenage boys who they found really difficult. It was a very difficult area and they found really difficult in terms of their behaviour and control. You had teenage boys turning up at two hours before the start of the school day in order to get into school to utilise the technology because if you didn't turn up two hours early you didn't get on to one of the computers that was available. Now having that sort of why on earth with these teenage boys who were difficult and problems most of the day turn up early to learn they were really interested in learning what the teacher had to do was to inspire them in some way and finding that thing that turns them on is really key. Technology can help with that. It's not the only thing but it can help with that. So how can ICT help parents get more involved in their progress of the children and into the education process generally? Well one of the key messages that we have from all the evidence again is that the engagement of parents in their learning helps the children in terms of their achievement. So we're really trying to look at how do we help parents to get engaged? How do they know what's happening? What we've tried to do is to develop the concept of learning platforms in schools. The learning platform being a sort of intranet but it's available outside of the school. So accessible from home and we've had examples in one of the leading schools in the UK for example that's taken this forward. Teachers and parents rather at home can check at any point to see whether their child's in school. After they turned up in the morning when they set them off they've been registered. They can find out what their timetable is for the day. If the child has had an issue during the day which has resulted in some form of sanction because they've been misbehaving then that's recorded and the parent can know about it and can have a chat with their child when they come home in the evening and say why did you get into trouble today? The child can't say hey I was good nothing happened right because the evidence is there. In the same way if the child is actually rewarded in school the parent can say I see you've got a merit today really good well done congratulations. The results of tests are available to the parents so they can see what's available. Right down to we've taken this to the point where there are some challenges about what we're doing but for example in one this particular school I'm thinking of they also because they have a cashless system that records what the child has bought at lunchtime they can put online what the child ate at lunchtime. Now on the one hand you say well why in earth would that matter well we have a problem in the UK with obesity and with a lot of children eating the wrong sorts of things so when the child comes home and says I didn't have anything for lunch today and the mother says well you know or the father says well you know in that case you know here's a nice big bowl of chips for you right they can now sort of check and say well you actually had pizza and chips for lunch right so I don't think you should have pizza and chips tonight again we should try something else now you know for a lot of children when you look at that as a total picture they understand why that's happening on the other hand there is a bit where children are saying and this is the balance we have to draw actually I have my own private time as well and what I eat for lunch is something that's up to me and not up to parents so managing that managing that understanding is something that schools are going to have to get to cope with as well as to what they make available and that's a choice for the school and the community one of the IT techniques you've mentioned is the interactive whiteboard as well as the video conferencing so can you tell us how these systems or techniques can really make a difference in the educational process one of the early things that we discovered was the ability to use technology for whole class teaching now that can be simply at the level of projecting what might be on a computer and for a teacher to talk through it where the interactive whiteboard comes into its own is the ability for the teacher to have that as a part and parcel of their resources in the classroom so they can coordinate at any time and because of its interactivity not only can the teacher engage with it but also the pupils can as well so we have many sort of examples where children will come up and actually do things with the teacher in terms of changing what the rest of the class actually sees and that engages the children again in a much bigger way than would otherwise be the case and I think in a way it's about taking the traditional sort of chalkboard which perhaps was a two dimensional experience for children into now a sort of three or four dimensional experience in terms of not only does it have video and moving and parts etc but it also has the ability to be interactive as part of that for children to actually change what would actually be happening and again it's not in itself the technologies of no value how the teacher uses it is what makes it really sort of effective One of the key points in your presentation was Wikipedia tell us whether Wikipedia can be a credible educational tool or source and then how you view its importance is it really an important educational resource or not My point about Wikipedia was twofold really one that it's peer moderated and so it's about being live available and changing and the second point was that because it's universal and having more information than any single book but the challenge is whether or not that knowledge that you're receiving is accurate because it's been put up by other people rather than actually being edited and amended by academics Now for me that presents both the challenge but also an opportunity the challenge clearly is to make sure young people are aware that it may not be true but that's an opportunity as well because how do you find out if it's true so yes you might well take your Wikipedia as a first point of contact it gives you information it probably is accurate it's more accurate the latest research would say that 90% plus of the articles on there are absolutely accurate probably even higher than that so more than likely you've got something that's accurate but it will give you clues as to where else you might go to actually check out so part of the challenge is how do you get people to understand you need to know where the source is you need to know who it is that's saying something as well as what it is they're saying and whether or not the quality of that you can believe and go with it's a challenge for education as a whole there's an example given in the colleague Professor Stephen Happle makes a comment about where people worry about children copying on the internet for example in the same way so they might be given a project or a piece of homework to do and then they just copy off the internet yeah big challenge but that's about what the teacher is asking instead of saying to a child go and write an essay on this topic say to the child go and find five essays already written and criticise them say which one's good which one's bad because you won't find that on the internet but you will find the five essays now that's the challenge how do you take people to a different level that's critical thinking it's of higher order thinking than just actually writing the essay so actually you're asking the children to do far more than would otherwise be the case but you can now do that because you have the technology available and it's about education beginning to understand that and move forward one of the interesting things I wondered why YouTube was blocked in some schools so why is that well I think a number of schools are concerned about the internet generally and the fact that it has available access to many sites that are inappropriate for young people and all of our schools in the UK have some form of filtering system adapted so both in terms of technology filtering but also in terms of sort of principles of access and the way in which children are educated those two things go together but the use of things like YouTube again because it's a sort of universal sort of available you can have clips on there that are really significant really mind help you think help you develop use in a number of... I've used clips myself and didn't show one today but I've often used clips of that nature however there are clips on there that you wouldn't necessarily want children to see and the challenge again is how do you develop your system so that you either have as a matter of process of education the ability to access that rather than closing it down so many schools in the UK take the easy option of closing it down I think that easy option is one that is not sustainable and along the term you actually have to enable people to access these tools because they are really powerful tools but you have to be able to help them to do it in a way in which it can be really sort of effective for them and secure for them and safe for them one of the points also you've covered is peer support and what technology can help in this so can you elaborate on this? well the peer support works in a number of different ways but one of the initial things is that quite often children learn by teaching so if you're in a situation where you have your friend ask you a question by trying to explain the answer you actually learn more yourself in the explanation of that and you actually again take yourself to a higher level in terms of thinking so the idea of peer support and being able to set problems within their own sort of classroom community is one in itself but then you've got the broader community of the rest of the world and there are a whole series of sites now which you can use to get support some of which are teacher supported some of which are expert supported and others are just simply peer support in that environment in the UK we've got a number of secure social networking sites that are moderated but do challenge children to actually think and improve their educational opportunities as well and they are very popular with the children themselves children and learners do want to learn the issue is what is it they want to learn and are we always just going to try and control that and steer it so our final question would be when ICT is integrated in many schools whatever the country is to are there any drawbacks or issues of concern that school heads should be putting in consideration whenever they think of having their schools ICT integrated no I suppose I think generally the advantages will always outweigh the disadvantages clearly there are a range of changes that will be taking place when you have ICT integrated those changes will always present challenges so the opportunity for children to both use but also misuse the technology is one that yes schools are going to have to address they have to address that through education as well as through trying to keep children safe and secure within the environment that they're in so there are technical solutions but there are more likely the sort of human relationships solutions about how children should behave anyway and behaving there are big issues about how children will behave in an online world and they're not much different but they can have significantly larger impact in an online world than in a sort of real environment so yes there are a whole range of things which a school principal a school head teacher a school system needs to ensure in order to keep their children safe and secure in that environment there are challenges for teachers in terms of the way in which children will learn the information that they have available to them their expectations of the system but in terms of overall this is about saying to young people you want to learn and we want to create the environment in which you can learn and making it so inspiring and so exciting that the issues of behaviour go away because in that environment for that minute they are totally absorbed in what they're trying to do we'd like to thank you so much for your valuable insights and it was really an interesting presentation and interview thank you very much, thanks a lot