In this exclusive interview with Edarabia, Dr. John Collick, Head of Education Strategy at Promethean, shares his thoughts on why quality education can help young children be better prepared for the future.
1. Can you tell us more about the needs of 21st Century education systems? How does Promethean help fulfil these needs?
I think there’s an assumption that 21st century education is somehow a radical and revolutionary departure from earlier systems because of the rise of ICT and the movement towards globalisation. In my experience, working with Ministries of Education worldwide, the key goals of any government in educating its citizens haven’t drastically changed. In essence, we want to teach young people to be positive contributors to society and the economy and to be empathetic, responsible, and happy citizens. To achieve this you need quality education with teachers who have the necessary tools and support to be effective.
Assessment is one of the most important components of the education system and we are seeing a movement away from knowledge-based summative testing (e.g. high stakes national exams) towards formative assessment in the classroom, and the rise of skills portfolios that are peer-validated (LinkedIn is a perfect example of this). We’re also seeing an increase in the idea of blended learning whereby teachers will use different methods to teach different things. This means that ICT becomes part of a toolkit that educators dip into to use when appropriate, which is a much more flexible approach.
Promethean is first and foremost an education company. Although we specialise in classroom technology we are very much focused on working with our clients, from governments to school principals, to understand what they want to achieve from an education point of view. It may be an improvement in the teaching of STEM, better assessment strategies, getting more girls to go to school, etc. Once we have a clear picture, then we will put together a solution that combines hardware, software, support and training. This last part is extremely important to us. Above all, teachers need effective tools and support to enable them to use them. We provide pedagogical training as well as technical support so that our clients can really use our products to enhance their teaching practice.
2. How have you implemented Promethean’s interactive classroom technology solutions in a school located in the UAE or in the MENA region? What have been some of the positive outcomes?
We’ve been active in the region for almost twenty years now and have enjoyed great success both at the ministerial level and with schools throughout MENA. We work through partners – for us, it’s very important that we collaborate with people who really understand the local education systems and culture – and we’re very lucky to have excellent partners with experience in education in all of the countries we operate in.
We’ve also just opened our office in Dubai, next to the World Trade Centre. We will be launching our very first Promethean Innovation Hubs this year in the region. A Promethean Innovation Hub is where we work closely with schools that have a reputation for excellence in teaching to develop new ways of using technology in the classroom. We’ll be co-operating with them to explore the potential of interactive teaching and learning. Over the next year, we will be running research programmes with teachers who have been using Promethean to create fantastic lessons for their students. The aim is to create methodologies to help educators worldwide get the best out of classroom technology.
3. What are your thoughts on automation and the future of employment for graduates?
The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics is something that interests me very much, and I believe that it will have a profound effect on the jobs market. As low-skilled manual labour is increasingly taken over by machines, the demand for higher-order thinking skills increases. This will put pressure on society to ensure that its young people learn the skills necessary to create and work on the complex products and projects that robots can’t do. There is a misunderstanding that artificial intelligence is similar to human intelligence and that eventually we’ll all be replaced by machines. In reality, A.I. is significantly different and struggles with many things humans do with ease – social interaction, creative and strategic thinking, complex pattern analysis, etc. We need to quickly understand where our strengths lie as humans, educate our young people to excel in those areas, and leave the heavy lifting to the robots.
4. Can you tell us more about your session at GESS titled “Cyberstudents – what are they and how will we teach them?”
I discussed the three significant disruptors in education that have risen in the last ten years or so and explaining how these will change our definition of students and teachers. The first is the rise of the mobile device – smartphones, tablets – whereby our interaction with technology has become very personal. We are no longer working with big systems, but with individual collections of apps that enhance our identity. The second is recent discoveries in neuroscience, that have radically changed the way we understand the learning mind. Finally, the rise of A.I. is forcing us to think carefully about the nature of intelligence, technology and consciousness. The cyberstudent and cyberteacher are part of a new generation who will use these disruptors to develop more powerful and highly personalised and self-aware ways of learning and teaching.
Dr. John Collick is Head of International Education Strategy for Promethean, a world-leading education technology. Dr. Collick is a graduate of Sussex University in England where he received his Masters and Doctoral degree in English. He lectured in Language, Literature, and Philosophy for ten years in Japan, working in the prestigious literature faculty of Waseda University in Tokyo, where he designed and implemented the department’s first e-learning system. He also worked with the Japanese telecom company NTT on the development of a virtual reality shared world learning management system for higher education. On his return to England, he became Production Manager at a multimedia company, creating websites, CD-ROM brochures and training software for major clients such as Sony, Lloyds Bank, Panasonic and the RNLI.
In his role at Promethean, he works closely with Ministries of Education to develop solutions and programmes to meet the needs of 21st Century education systems worldwide. His focus is on the development of effective and scalable pedagogy for teachers to ensure the successful implementation of technology in the classroom. He has worked closely with the MOEs in Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East on a range of national project and policy initiatives.
Dr. Collick is an internationally renowned speaker and expert on the educational and social impact of technology. He also lectures on innovative learning strategies, critical and creative thinking, and transhumanism, specifically the current revolution in the way that people interact with machines and intelligent systems. He is the author of several books and novels, and articles on literature, media, ICT and learning.
Would you like to write for Edarabia? Email us on press@edarabia.com
Twitter