Channel 4 Summer education conference

What Comes Next?

The Channel 4 Education Summer conference gathered together an eclectic mix of digital media and education professionals to consider how the UK Education system “struggles to respond to ever increasing demands, new policy initiatives, new demands from parents and students, and all the innovations in pedagogy, technology and neuroscience.”

This was a timely event given the announcements the same day from the Government about 21st Century schools and the White paper, the recent ministerial changes in DCSF and BIS and the uncertainty around funding and a growing awareness of the rapidly emerging “more for less” concept facing the public sector in general.

Zenna Atkins, Chair of OFSTED opened the day with a reflective and honest appraisal of the need for the inspection regime to be sensitive to the need for 21st century learning and there is an interesting piece by Merlin John on his blog agent4change.(link below)

Professor Rose Luckin from the London Knowledge Lab drew on the increasing body of evidence which supports technology enhanced learning but still warned of the “illusions” of technology, organisations and knowledge.

Matt Locke the commissioning editor at channel 4 outlined some of the successful projects they have supported such as Battlefront, which has succeeded using digital technology to help young people explore community, campaigning, and communications.

Donald Clark spiced up the late afternoon with his usual passionate perspective on young people, technology, gaming and learning.

Finally the Teach meet concept came to channel 4 as a variety of practitioners shared their nuggets of effective practice in bite sized chunks without the use of PowerPoint!

Channel 4 seem to be filling a space (the event was sold out) surely it is time the education sector answered back?

Links;
http://www.channel4learning.com/
http://www.lkl.ac.uk/cms/
http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/
http://www.teachmeet.org.uk/
http://www.agent4change.net/

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Flux, education policy, events, games and learning, general ramblings, government, informal learning, learner voice, learning spaces, media, politics, schools, teaching and innovation, tools and technology, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.