Head's Blog:Technology

Dear Parents,

It is a topic touched on regularly in our newsletter and daily conversations, and rightly so as it is a hugely important one for all of our children – the role and impact of technology in our children’s education and their fast-changing future.

Earlier this week, Caterham School hosted an Education Evolution conference. Like ourselves, Caterham are one of many schools on a journey exploring and utilising technology in ways to best support their pupils in meeting the demands of the future workplace and preparing them for the challenges of the next phase of global development. Education is evolving at a faster pace than any other period in recent history and we must constantly evolve our curriculum to meet these needs. The focus on skill sets for the future workplace was a central theme for all the speakers.

The conference highlighted the current skill sets that we need to be developing in our children:

· Complex problem solving;

· Critical thinking;

· Creativity;

· People management;

· Co-ordinating with others;

· Emotional intelligence;

· Judgment and decision making;

· Service orientation;

· Negotiation;

· Cognitive flexibility.

(Source: World Economic Forum)

There was a clear message that it is the speed of change that we must be ready for. While mainframe computers slowly emerged over the years and are now declining with the arrival of cloud computing and mobile devices, in comparison these new technologies are emerging and increasing at an exponentially faster speed and will also subsequently decline more quickly as the next new technologies come in. This presents a significant challenge for businesses, which will need to adapt and evolve over shorter spaces of time (not wanting to be the next Blockbuster). How they do this and of course how we educate our children for this, ‘Are you ready to change every Tuesday?’ - this is the future workplace for our children.

“We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.” Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum.

Sir Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham and political author, spoke passionately about the fourth Industrial revolution (Education 4.0) and the fascinating role of Artificial Intelligence. He stated bluntly that while AI and automation provide the most exciting future, if we do not carefully manage its development it has the potential to ruin us. This leads back to our roles as educators and parents to ensure that our children have the right skill sets, in this case to take responsibility for their actions, a ‘Digital Responsibility’ for the world around them as well as their own well-being. Sir Anthony is absolutely right in saying ‘education should be about being a better human’and we must continue to reflect and evolve this as part of our curriculum.

It is also why we host regular technology talks for pupils and parents and keep it a hot topic of discussion. We are proud of our computing curriculum, and our Leadership programme further develops these all important skill sets: collaborative classrooms, computational thinking, student-led learning, motivation, independent learning and subsequently excellent progress, as observed by one of our Governors (Mrs Riley, Deputy Head Brighton College) who visited the school last week.

Even with a degree in Computer Science and seeing myself as ‘tech savvy’, it is the exponential rate of change that I dwelt upon the most after leaving the conference. Like our parents/grandparents who struggle with the basic concepts of computers, what will we be struggling to understand in the future that our children/grandchildren/great grandchildren will be fully immersed and confident in? You may have already seen commercially available headsets that enable you to move/control things using brainwaves. In the future, these could be used to share information with anyone in the world, instantly. How would that change education and the workplace? Now there is a thought.

Jason Gayler

Head of Pre-Prep