School of the Future – what’s possible?

Martin Bean – What Technology Makes Possible pt.1

Martin is the General Manager of the Education Production Group within Microsoft.

Martin set the scene with a convincing talk about the context for change in our schools, focusing particularly on the attributes of learners. Key quotes from his presentation include:

“We’re out of time, the incremental movement simply won’t get us where to need to be!”

“Technology is a great enabler, but on its own it won’t change anything – it’s all about people, processes and envrionments”

“To be really successful it’s important we identify who our students are today and who they will be in the future.”

” Most of our students today have never known a world without texting, internet, cell phones, digital music and video on demand.”

“Being at school is like being on an aeroplane – you sit in seats facing the front, putting your trust in the guys up the front to take you where you want to go, and then they make you turn off your electronics!” (grade 11 student to his teacher)

“If we want to be successful in education we need to figure out a way to harness the energy and enthusiasm of students for Web2.0/social networking applications into our classrooms.”

Martin identified five key opportunity areas for technology within education:

1. extending reach
2. enabling relevant, personalised, and engaged learning
3. giving educators greater insight and more time
4. supporting an agile, efficient and connecting education system
5. nurturing powerful communities of learning

He shared his vision of the new platform, noting that it’s no longer about servers and PCs anymore, rather, it’s about:

• PCs
• Mobile devices
• Cloud Services