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Who gives a blog about education?

By Kevin MacKenzie 20 Feb 2009.
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The hustle and bustle of the Becta stand at BETT.

We’re rolling it out online, nationwide, 24/7, across the globe.

Who gives a blog about education?

Judging by the hustle and bustle of the heaving crowds around me, quite a lot of people I think. I’ve been spending the day at the BETT show in Olympia, it’s the annual January get-together of teachers and just about anyone else connected to education. It’s a show for those who know their Google from their Moodle and their mobile from their pen and ink. The halls at this jamboree are packed full of all the technological gizmos, gadgets and content you couldn’t ever possibly think of. They all have a purpose. To support teaching and learning in the classrooms of today.

But I don’t think this is really a party for the teachers. I think it’s really all about the kids. The youth of today who connect with technology – from PCs and laptops to mobiles or about anything else that’s got a chip inside it and connected to the web. Those fluent in Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and MySpace.

Technology as enabler

And that’s only part of the story, because in the end the technology doesn’t really matter – it’s the opportunity it can offer students, enabling them to share knowledge, information and ideas from just about anywhere that has a internet connection.

Is that a bad thing? Well not if you live in the Serengeti, Timbuktu or just about anywhere on this planet. And especially not for Michael from rural Hagerstown in the US. He couldn’t afford to go to university, so he managed to get his education through Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseWare (OCW) instead.

What’s great about that? Well he had access to a staggering 1800 courses, from almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT and all absolutely free! With over a million hits per month, half of which come from outside the US, Michael is not in the minority here.

Michael’s story is just the tip of the iceberg, technology breaks down barriers and opens up education for all. And that’s why I am here at BETT. We’re putting together the finishing touches to a nextgenerationlearning campaign for our client, Becta (the agency responsible for delivering on government policy on technology in schools), that explores this technology in learning stuff with the aim of getting the message about its benefits closer to parents so that they can participate in the story too. We’re rolling it out online, nationwide, 24/7, across the globe. Coming to PDA near you.

If you'd like to know more, please contact kevinmackenzie@theteam.co.uk