I haven’t had time to fully digest everything I saw and heard at this year’s Education World Forum, but I thought I’d just mention three themes that seemed to me to be emerging, as we move into this year’s Bett show.

Teachers matter

Although you wouldn’t necessarily have picked up on this from some of the Twitter messages being broadcast, it was abundantly clear that the research shows that teachers make a difference. In a nutshell, technology can enhance what a teacher does, not replace it.

“Soft” skills are important

Skills like collaboration and problem-solving are key these days. I’m chairing a seminar on this very theme at Bett. See Assessing “soft” skills for details.

Outputs not inputs

I was going to write an article about this, and sort of hinted at it in the article referenced above. Basically, as was said several times throughout the day, these days the world economy doesn’t pay people for what they know, but what they can do with what they know.

None of this is new, of course, but it’s good to hear it confirmed by people who have their finger on the international pulse.

 

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