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The UK education system must catch up when it comes to using technology in learning, and schools now risk being left behind the rest of society unless teaching becomes 'turbo-charged' by educational technology, a new report has warned. 

Launched by Lord Jim Knight, a former Labour schools minister, findings from the Technology-Enhanced Learning Research Programme (TEL) said that without more support, UK schools will be left offering an analogue education in a digital world.

Educational technology and not just technologies designed for other purposes, needed to be embraced, the report said, calling for the use of artificial intelligence to personalise learning, for the development of "virtual worlds" for disadvantaged students and for the need to put computational thinking at the heart of the curriculum. 

Professor Richard Noss, director of the TEL Programme at the Institute of Education, said technologies had transformed the way people work, communicate, bank, shop and play, but that they had so far failed to transform education.

"Education needs to catch up," he said. "The system needs to be upgraded. If it isn't, our children and our country will fall seriously behind in the digital revolution. And when that happens we will find computers shaping us rather than us using them to shape the world."

Noss said schools needed to "engage the Xbox generation". 

"They need to be able to take advantage of the innovative teaching methods and flexible learning environments that technology enhanced learning offers," he said.

"Only then will they be able to teach their pupils the skills to enable them to succeed in the globalised, digital workplace."

 

 

Source: Public Service

Read more: http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=19996

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