Leading the way in technology and education

Wednesday 14 June, 2017

Information Technology in Schools: What’s next, and where to from here?

Our Director – Innovative Technologies, Mr Anthony England shared his insights on this topic with K-12 IT directors and managers at the Edutech 2017 International Congress & Expo in Sydney.

Mr England spoke about the need to align IT intent with the strategic vision of a school, an approach that has been adopted by Pymble Ladies’ College.

“We live in a rapidly changing world with some remarkable IT tools that could potentially transform learning at Pymble. The difficulty lies in choosing the ones that best fit our College Vision and accelerate the delivery of Personalised Learning at Pymble. Right now, I’m very excited about a few tools that will give our teachers timely insights into students’ abilities and challenge areas,” said Mr England.

According to Mr England, three major emerging trends include:

1. A move beyond Business Intelligence to Artificial Intelligence – best described as a move away from insight to foresight, which allows teachers to not just see what has been happening for a student, but to project future growth and suggest areas for supporting and stretching each student.
2. Greater use of Virtual and Augmented Reality, which is a safe place for students to explore, fail and learn from mistakes.
3. A move from software that records information about a student (like grades, awards and absences) to systems that help students reflect and record their own details (such as learning goals and wellbeing).

“The great joy of technology is that it is ever-changing, but this also makes it difficult sometimes to understand the potential of innovative technologies that are right in front of us, let alone those of the future.

“However, being guided by our College mission statement ensures we can continually explore how any emerging IT supports, amplifies and extends that strategy vision and be confident that the right technologies will be part of our students’ learning journey as we head towards the future,” Mr England said.