This article is based on two articles I wrote for the Bee Digital marketing website in December 2020.

It’s a cliché to say that we can predict anything except the future, but like most clichés, it happens to be true! Therefore, regard this article as a kind of thinking aloud, ruminations on technology to be aware of and ready for, with one or two suggestions thrown in.

Some background

A major thing that the Covid-19 pandemic has done is to give us all a huge kick up the backside. We’ve had the technology to enable working from home for years, but there was not much incentive to implement it very widely. It’s a testament to the commitment and flexibility of companies and educational institutions that the educational system didn’t simply collapse. On the contrary, teaching and learning have moved online to a greater or lesser extent, with varying degrees of success. So what has this meant, and what might it mean?

Flipped learning

One of the benefits of conducting lessons through technologies such as Zoom is that it’s made recording lessons much easier. In theory, a teacher could take a lesson online, record it, and then make it available to the class afterwards for the benefit of students who were absent for the lesson, or for those who wish to use it as revision. 

I say “in theory” because of GDPR. Bear in mind that when you record a Zoom session, you are also going to record the interactions of the people who took part. The data protection aspect and ways of addressing it are a matter for individual schools. 

As far as the time and technology are concerned though, the act of making a recording is costless, because the teacher was going to take the lesson anyway. They didn’t have to set aside time they don’t really have to make videos in order to implement flipped learning.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that, having tried it out for myself, recording a presentation through Zoom and making it available as a video file could hardly be easier.

AR and VR

One wonders whether this new-found need for online lessons will finally cause the prediction of widespread Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) to materialise. (The difference between the two is that VR is a fully immersive experience while AR, according to Adam Greenfield in Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life, 

blends its cues and overlays with the real world as we perceive it, and doesn’t require any particular specialised gear.

These have been predicted as the next big thing for years, but as far as I can ascertain they are hardly ubiquitous. As the reason cannot entirely be due to cost (think Google cardboard VR) or availability of curriculum-relevant material (think of the multiplicity of AR apps available), it’s quite likely that it boils down to a lack of perceived need. Why, for example, go to all the trouble and expense of enabling students to walk around inside a set of molecules when all you have to do is show them a physical model? True, the immersive experience may be more eye-opening, but would the potential benefits justify the costs?

If there is another round of school closures, perhaps in addition to recorded videos schools might wish to explore the use of VR and AR to enhance remote learning.

Technology availability

Of course, one fly in the ointment is the so-called digital divide. A  report by Microsoft reveals that there is a huge disparity between students’ access to technology at home. Now, you might retort that being Microsoft, they would say that. However, they commissioned Teacher Tapp to undertake the research, so there is some degree of objectivity (though beware terms like “teachers believe…”). 

In any case, even the most hardened cynic would be unlikely to argue that access to technology has not been a key issue during this time. By rights, access to technology at home, or lack of it, should be taken into account in schools’ data.

Management Information Systems

Management Information Systems in schools have been around long enough to have become very sophisticated. For example, if Fred in Year 7 and Jon in Year 9 are absent or late at the same times every week, you can be alerted to see if there is something going on you ought to know about. If a period of declining marks coincides with a period of absence, that too is a cause of investigation.

Now, though, there are complications. How should the school record attendance if a student turns up and then is sent home because someone in the class has tested positive? If the school makes online lessons available, and a student doesn’t turn up, is that because of laziness, or because they have home caring duties which would normally be undertaken before and after school, or because of a lack of technology with which to access the lessons? If a student’s grades suddenly start dropping, is that because she isn’t getting a proper breakfast and lunch at home?

These are issues to be taken up at a school level, but it’s worth bearing in mind that several MIS providers have created guidance about how to enter data such as this. It’s also a good idea, if you can, to find out how much access your own students have to technology outside the school, assuming you haven’t done so already in the hope of benefitting from the DfE’s laptop scheme. Even if there’s nothing you can do to mitigate the situation in the short term, it will at least provide invaluable data when evaluating students’ progress and devising catch-up strategies.

So far, we looked at how some technology has become or might become, a feature of school education as a result of our Covid experience. But what might we expect in the longer term?

Unfortunately, “expect” is perhaps too strong or too optimistic a term to use. New technologies have to have time to prove themselves before schools en masse will be willing to adopt them. There are also financial constraints and, above all, the day-to-day pressures. What headteacher, after all, is going to fret about how blockchain might be implemented while half the students have had to be sent home and the other half is in “bubbles”. Nevertheless, a bit of “blue sky thinking” is often enjoyable, and sometimes even useful. So here goes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In principle, this would be a life-saver in schools. Just in terms of the amount of new data being generated in schools because of recording new kinds of attendance (see the previous article), having a piece of code working on the data and not merely reporting but predicting likely student outcomes would enable schools to be even more proactive.

There are many potential benefits of AI in schools, and some potential pitfalls, but perhaps this is largely academic at the moment. Why? Because by and large, the technology is not really there yet in my opinion. At least, it doesn’t seem to be robust enough to trust it to make predictions that could affect how you provide schooling to some of your students.

Besides, there are issues of bias and legality too. It’s no longer news to assert that many computer algorithms, far from avoiding human biases, have embedded them. As if that wasn’t bad enough, much of the time when AI comes to a conclusion, it doesn’t know how it did so. That means, it cannot be challenged in any meaningful way.

Imagine AI telling Student A that she doesn’t have the aptitude for university, and then the school and her university choices acting on this “Computer says ‘no’” advice. 

One of the stipulations of the GDPR is that people have the right to question decisions made automatically by an algorithm. Add to that requirement the fact that companies regard their AI code as a closely-guarded secret, and you can see why it will be some time before AI is a major part of the education landscape.

Chatbots

Chatbots, or automated assistants, are beginning to find their way into education, especially HE. A well-designed chatbot in schools could be a godsend in these times. If some of a school’s admin staff are having to self-isolate, a chatbot could answer many of parents’ queries and concerns.

Chatbots could also assist in students’ learning. For example, they could chat with a student to determine how well he has understood a concept, and record a grade accordingly. Or a chatbot could ascertain a student’s needs, and then suggest online resources she would benefit from consulting.

All-in-all, the potential for chatbots seems to me to be more realisable, or realisable sooner, than that of more general AI. There’s an interesting and fairly recent article about chatbots in education here.

Blockchain

The potential for the education of this technology is huge. It’s largely associated with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but it has far wider implications.

Without delving into the technicalities, blockchain enables a great deal of information to be stored in a decentralised fashion such that if one part gets compromised, the information is still intact.

These “nodes” are linked, and conditions can be applied. For example, students’ achievements can be recorded and stored in a blockchain, with accreditation (perhaps in the form of badges) being given when certain conditions are satisfied.

If a student changes schools, the record of what they have already studied, and how it differs from what the new school offers, can be very easily ascertained.

One of the problems facing teachers who wish to make some money from the resources they develop in their own time and at their own expense is piracy. With blockchain, it will be relatively easy to guard against that.

Conclusion

As I suggested right at the start of this articles, it’s unwise to make predictions, especially about the future. However, these new or relatively new technologies are starting to prove themselves. It is surely only a matter of time before they are applied more widely in education.