Here is a list of predictions I made in 2001 about the classroom of the future. I’m pleasantly surprised about how accurate it has turned out to be – but I think it will be even more challenging to predict the next ten years because there are so many options opening up. What are your predictions for the next ten years? And is it worth bothering to make such predictions anyway?

Who knows the road ahead?I think it’s interesting to get pupils’ views on what might be down the road, technologically speaking. When I was teaching I devised a set of lessons around designing the library of the future. Some of the ideas were fantastic – and some have come to pass as well! Science fiction tends to be a good source of ideas about how the future might turn out.

I don’t actually think predicting the future of technological development, which you can extrapolate from the current status quo to a certain extent, is as difficult as predicting how people might use the technology, and what the unintended consequences might be. That’s the real reason I think exercises in future-gazing are important: not to seem clever, but to explore (possibly unimagined) issues and effects.

Anyway, here is that list, numbered for ease of reference.

1. Much of the technology for the classroom of the "future" actually exists now. The difference in the future will be that it will be much more common and used as a matter of course.

2. The classroom of the future will be a "smart" classroom. It should be possible for desks to have computers built into them, much like you can buy rulers and mouse mats with calculators built into them. The computer would know who is sitting at the desk, and log on automatically and produce a menu of options, including "Load last piece of work".

3. Connectivity and "embeddedness" will be the guiding principles: connectivity, in the sense that whatever device pupils do their work on will not lead to a cul-de-sac: it will be straightforward to start work on a handheld computer in one place and continue on a laptop somewhere else; embeddedness, in the sense that you won't have to think about what you're using, because it will all be part of the fabric of living. These two ideas are, of course, closely related.

4. Schools as such won't disappear, but the widespread use of handheld or laptop computers, the internet and teleconferencing will mean that those who are unable to attend school because of, say, illness, will not be excluded from the learning process. Also, guided learning time will be extended beyond the normal school day.

5. Students will complete online lessons and assessments. These will be marked automatically, and the results emailed to both the student and the teacher.

6. Students will use hand held computers to read ebooks, or compilations of resources in one or other ebook format. Likely contenders are Microsoft's ebook reader and Adobe's new Palm computer version of PDF.

7. Schools will buy their lessons in a pick-n-mix style from online content providers.

8. Schools will print out books and similar resources through the use of print on demand technology, perhaps through a licensing system similar to the one used for photocopying resources at present. (Richard Charkin, chief executive of Macmillan, has warned that the probable take-up of print-on-demand by intermediaries such as libraries is potentially "the biggest threat facing booksellers.")

9. Teachers will continue to be the single most important element in the learning process.

10. "Pundits" who plug only one vision of the future will be proved wrong.

11. Anyone who produces a list like this will turn out to be wrong!

Evaluation

1. Definitely.

2. I should think this is technically possible, but not sure there is a need for it, or even if it is desirable. Given that so much can be done in the cloud, whiich is available anywhere any time on (almost) any device, why bhother with this? It seems a bit restrictive.

3. Definitely.

4. Definitely. I’m not sure I agree that guided learning time is anything new (homework anyone?), but I also don’t think it’s universally desirable. I’ve found that many students are keen to explore their own interests in their own time and sometimes achieve amazing things without, perhaps in spite of, teachers’ guidance!

5. Of course.

6. Yes, except the technology I cited is well-dated now.

7. I’m not sure about this because there are so many all-in-one “solutions’ available now it’s probably not cost-effective to pick and mix. Also, one of the things I think is that if a school opts for a solution or solutions that do one thing well, the problems there are: how much staff training is going to be required to get everyone up to speed on all these systems, and are they all compatible with each other? To a large extent, I think it might be better to opt for all-in-one solutions even if some of the individual modules are not as wonderful as one would like. In economics terms, it’s about comparative advantage, which I explained here.

8. I’m not sure about this either. There’s a lot of free stuff, and although I think reading hard copy is, on the whole, better for comprehension than reading digital copy, you can’t get away from the fact that PDFs etc are so convenient. Why would you want a load of paper clogging up cupboards and bookshelves?

9. Definitely. As ever. In my opinion, anyone who says teachers should be guides on the side, and that we don’t need teachers, only facilitators, clearly knows nothing about good teaching. The same goes for anyone suggesting that AI can and will supplant teachers. Support, yes; supplant, no.

10. Absolutely!

11. Even more absolutely! After all, I didn’t think machine learning would advance to the extent it has, so I didn’t predict how AI could be used in education.

Perhaps I’ll revisit this list again in ten years’ time, if I’m still doing this stuff by then.