SLF 2007 - Stephen Heppell

This is a brief description of the keynote seminar on Wednesday evening by Stephen Heppell.

How much has changed in the past thirty years and how much will it change in the next thirty? We can't answer that question but we can start to see the consequences.

• "Small is going to be hugely important"
• stuff will be free - e.g. encyclopaedias, public service broadcasting
• identity online? Who do you trust with that information?
• community - peer to peer
• time is dealt with very badly on the Internet - redundancy, where has that stuff gone?

The example of the technology on a boat was described. This gives a picture of the way that the complexity is impacting on the simplicity of a boat. If this is the case for a boat then how does this impact on learning?

• We have fairly poor real time data;
• we have ignored mobile phones;
• pupil but not pupils centric;
• minimal predictive information;
• doing the job is tougher;
• research comes from where?
• what metrics are we collecting: and
• useless international comparisons.

We are now in a very nice bottom up world. In the 20th century we lived in a very cautious way:

• government policy paper
• inspection guidlines
• etc.

Today we just get on with it (note - is this true?). A lot of examples were given of the way that this is true. A real sense of change and development. "A hugely exciting time". A model of one size fits all has gone. What we should be looking for is to take the ingredients and apply them in your own circumstances. You need to do it carefully to ensure that it is not as mess but this is hugely encouraging.

We have moved from certain positions to others:

from "we know what we know" to "detective work"

What does this mean? We recognise schools as places where we take research forward. The hypothesis is that "Our school can be improve significantly (self esteem, love of learning, attendance, etc)". We then look around the world and see what is successful. We take the best that we can find and implement for ourselves. Finally we share that success with our community. The idea is explained better on this website : http://www.learnometer.net/ . The analysis of change moves right down into the classroom. Stephen has launched a project based in six countries, including Scotland, so we need to watch this space for the development.

Stephen went on to describe what schools might look like in the next few years. The examples of school spaces looked very different to what many of our schools currently look like. Some video examples can be found here : http://www.heppell.net/bva2/index.htm

So why should we bother? The front runners are few and far between. The footprint of Scottish education is worldwide. The national policy should be "we could do this". The school policy should be "we don't know how good our children can be ... let's find out". New technology give us new opportunities for learning. It is a special time.

"We want Scotland's people to be all that they might be" - Fiona Hyslop, MSP.