Representatives from Brazil, Australia, Thailand, Germany and Estonia will be among the panellists taking part in the third EDUCATE Ventures’ EdTech focused webinar. 

The event, to be held on April 22, will examine how the use of EdTech is evolving in countries globally, and what strategies have been put forward by governments and innovators to advance the use of EdTech in education settings.

The webinar, entitled Learning from International Education Models, forms part of EDUCATE’s Shock to the System series, which was initiated with the publication of its report into EdTech use during the first school lockdown of 2020. The events are intended to spark conversations about the future shape of the education system post-Covid.

This EdTech webinar comes as countries around the world reflect on the success and challenges of remote learning in the past year and what lessons have been learned from the experience. Gavin Williamson, the UK Secretary of State for Education, suggested last week that it was time for pupils to put away their devices and get back to traditional learning in schools, suggesting that there were no immediate plans to look at extending the use of technology in schools. Educators, themselves, would not necessarily agree with this position. A recent poll of teachers belonging to the UK’s largest teaching organisation, the National Education Union, found that educators wanted to continue using EdTech in the teaching and learning process. The survey revealed that members favour retaining “new ways of working with technology in teaching” (69 per cent) and online parents’ evenings (57 per cent).

Panellists at EDUCATE’s international EdTech webinar will discuss how the implementation of technology in schools is happening in their respective countries, the role of governments in this process, and what challenges they have faced. It will look at how teaching and learning is augmented by technology and how educators are transforming their professional practice to embrace it.

It will also examine what lessons can be learned from the experiences of other countries and how easy it was — or not — to change traditional mindsets that might be resistant to increased remote learning and the use of devices and the internet as part of the education process.
The EdTech webinar will be chaired by Lord Jim Knight, Chief Education Advisor at TES Global and a former Schools Minister in the UK government of Tony Blair.
Rose Luckin, director of EDUCATE Ventures and Professor of Learner Centred Design at UCL Knowledge Lab, said: “The experiences of the past year, though difficult and challenging for educators and governments, provided the education ecosystem with an unprecedented opportunity to learn about the role technology can play when teachers and pupils cannot work face to face in the classroom.

“We have much to learn in the UK from other parts of the world about how to implement an effective strategy for education and we are looking forward to finding out more about how this has been achieved in other countries, and the successes and challenges they have experienced. The use of technology in education can no longer be ignored now that we have seen what can be achieved, and how quickly it became the norm for those months of lockdown out of necessity.

“We are extremely pleased to be hosting an event where we can bring together educators and policymakers from across the globe to learn from each other and we invite everyone who is interested in the future development of EdTech use in the UK to attend.”

To register, and for further information, please use this link.