#LWF11 – Stephen Heppell – What’s on the horizon?

Stephen started with a nice anecdote about starting his career asked a tough group of students to help him out by getting teaching tips from other teachers in return from him teaching them the content.

Be Very Afraid programme.  Students taught themselves to play an instrument in a month.

Evolution of tech in our lifetimes: Hardware -> software -> databases -> searching -> socialising -> learning next.

Learning will happen where we least expect it.  e.g. subtitling Bollywood movies in other languages in India; superclasses – 3 teachers, 90 kids, 5 terms learning in 3; Sugata Mitra – hole-in-the-wall.

Spent a few minutes tearing apart teacher training, if you don’t have the very best schools in that area then what right do you have to teach teachers?!

Should be ashamed to be at the top of Gove’s English Bacc league table – child cruelty!  We can do better.

People plus technology breaks cartels – education is a cartel that will be broken by people and technology.

Interesting to hear that Stephen is planning a free school, taking advantage of Gove’s policies to push his own way of doing things Academy!

Pupils need to prepared for the uncertainty.  The reason we are in the vanguard is because we’ve lived through the endless surprise of technological innovation in our lifetime.  We haven’t articulated how good this could be.

The World is broken, learning can heal conflict and suffering.  We have the chance to do so.  Make it loud make it heard!  A proper call to arms.

A captivating talk, Stephen showed how easy it can seem to present when you know your subject matter so well, no notes, just a series of images and a belief in your argument.