Podcast | Season 1 | Episode 4 : What Does the Fourth Industrial Revolution Mean for Schools

What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution? How well is Britain’s education system equipped to welcome this wave of technological innovation? How will this affect the future careers of young people? Camilla Turner (Education Editor, The Telegraph) chairs this panel of leaders in the tech sector: Dr Alison Clark-Wilson (Principal Research Lead, UCL EDUCATE Project), Nimmi Patel (Policy Manager, techUK), Nancy Wilkinson (Senior Programme Manager, Nesta) and Aftab Hussein (ILT Strategic Lead, Bolton College). This panel discussion was recorded live on 13 November 2019, in the Main Stage of the Schools & Academies Show at the NEC in Birmingham.

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Transcript

Camilla Turner
00:27

My name is Camilla Turner, I'm the Education Editor of The Daily Telegraph and I'll be chairing today's panel discussion. With me to discuss about technology today, we've got Nimmi Patel, Policy Manager at techUK. We've got Dr. Allison Clark-Wilson, Principal Research Lead at UCL EDUCATE Project. Aftab Hussain, who's the ILT Strategic Lead at Bolton College. And we've got Nancy Wilkinson, Senior Programme Manager at Nesta. Now today's schools are swamped with all kinds of companies offering technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, whatever it is, there's some kind of company out there that offers it. But how do schools really know what is just kind of good salesman and marketing techniques, but a really rubbish product? Or how do they know what is actually an incredible learning tool that will really enhance the classroom environment for their children, cut down workload for teachers, and really give children the skills they need for the next century? So we're going to hear from each of the panelists first for a few minutes, and then we'll have a discussion and then open it up to the floor for questions. We'll start with Dr. Allison.

Dr Alison Clark-Wilson
01:42

Thank you very much. In thinking about the fourth industrial revolution, it's become a phrase really where everybody's supposed to know what that means. So I think I'll start by just articulating a little bit about you know what, when we talk about it, what is everybody? What's the hype about? We in our lives can see the impact of clever digital things impacting on what we're doing as we go on the internet, as we navigate around, as we order pizza. We don't really know how it's working. But we can see the outputs of it when that bit of shopping that you thought you wanted two weeks ago, suddenly pops up on a message in a website somewhere else. So the tech giants are on this, they know that they can influence what we're seeing as we look at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, you name it. These things are out there, and they're affecting us now. And on the whole, we don't know much about how that's actually working. So when it comes to thinking about how an educational program or product is going to start to make decisions around children's learning, I think one of the first things we have as an education community to do is a be very critical and questioning about that. But it's hard to know what questions to ask when you don't already have some idea of some of the basics of how machine learning and artificial intelligence in education is designed into systems. My background, I started out as a school, secondary school teacher over 30 years ago, we're at the early days of technology. And I was around at the time when we had independent learning systems. And these were systems that were supposedly going to use machine learning, which is different to artificial intelligence. That means it's essentially thinking about a rules based system, that if you do something, it then suggests the next step for you and these these sorts of technologies have been in a lot of the educational technology projects, products that have been out there for many years. But what the game changer is, is really the speed at which those decisions can be made, and the amount of data that can be stored to inform that decision making. So that's really what when we start talking about the fourth industrial revolution, it's based on the fact that we've now got immense data storage and processor speeds, that means these things are done much nearer to real time. And that's the real difference here. So, you know, as you're walking around here, and you're talking to companies that are using artificial intelligence, be prepared to ask the questions around. How exactly is this algorithm working? What is it actually doing? Can I get underneath the bonnet of the technology? And they need to be able to answer those questions. So the first the first thing really is, you know, it's it's clear, it's coming. It's been there for a while, maybe hasn't noticed, it is early days in education. But the most important thing for us is to be critical of it in a way that we can understand better, how it might then impact on what we do in our educational decision making. So that's sort of an opening on fourth industrial revolution for education. What do we need to do? We need to upskill we need to learn more. One of the things that we're doing at UCL is working with a number of partners to essentially develop some useful materials for teachers and schools just to understand the basics of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how that might play out in educational decision making.

Camilla Turner
05:22

And now over to Nimmi Patel from techUK.

Nimmi Patel
05:25

Hi everyone. So techUK is a tech trade association with over 850 members, the majority of our members are smaller to medium enterprises. And we like to say that we represent the tech sector because of all the varying views that organisations our members have. Now there are a myriad of job opportunities available in the tech sector currently, which means that there's something for everyone. But as sort of the fourth industrial revolution continues, the skill shortages that we are seeing in the tech sector and across the economy will probably widen and how we how we face the fourth industrial revolution in terms of the policies that we make make a difference. Now, as history teaches us with the creation of the computer, I'd like to believe in techUK as well, that automation will benefit humanity rather than sort of take away jobs. We need to move away from the narrative that the robots will take our jobs if we are to excel in what we do as the fourth industrial revolution continues. Now, what we see is that 20 years ago, there were no such things as data scientists. 10 years ago, there were no such things as search engine optimisation. And five years ago, we only just started hiring social media managers. So automation is going to allow us to it's going to allow us to take away those those pesky repetitive jobs that we lose so much of our time and creativity on. We're going to be able to focus on more new exciting things hopefully. However, the short term impact on workers and people of automation really could have a potential impact if we don't get this right. If we're not able to upskill, retrain and rescale our peoplenin the face of automation, then we do seriously have a problem, which means that employers, industry and government really need to be aware of the challenges and the opportunities it faces. So a recent Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy report showcase that out of our European countries, the UK is lagging behind in terms of implementing automation and emerging technologies in the workforce. What that tells us is that we're not using automation to its full potential because we're basically afraid. Now how can we change public perception? How we change public perception is a crucial discussion that we need to have and in order to do so we need to build trust. We need to build that public trust to showcase that industry and government are doing something in order to help people into better, more fulfilling jobs.

Camilla Turner
08:15

Thank you and over to Nancy Wilkinson from Nesta.

Nancy Wilkinson
08:20

Thanks very much. And thanks for coming to this session. And thanks for having me here today. So Nesta is a foundation that works on innovation for social good, which probably doesn't mean that much to most people. But essentially, what we try and do is think of new ways to tackle some of the real challenges and problems in our society at the moment. And for us, education is a really, really key priority. So this topic really sits at the heart of what we're thinking about at the moment for our education system. And I think there's two sides to this question around the fourth industrial revolution. So one element is, as Allison was talking about before, and I'm very glad that you told us all what the fourth industrial revolution was because I didn't want to have to define that. But I think there's one side to it, which is how the education system can make the most of the technology that is in our world, the artificial intelligence and other kinds of digital tools that could really enhance the teaching and learning in our system. And at Nesta, we're working on a program with the Department for Education at the moment, to really trying to support schools and colleges to make more effective use of technology. So yesterday, we announced a number of tools that were supporting through grant funding, Aftab here is one of those so I'll let him tell you a bit more about what he's doing. But we're working with a range of organisations that are tackling challenges in the system using digital technology. Things like how can we make assessments quicker and easier and make the most of technology to remove some of administrative burdens? How can we work and support parents better through using technology? And how can we remove some of the administrative burdens from teachers? So they've got more time to do the things that we've just been talking about. We're also setting up at the moment and edtech testbed, which is where schools and colleges can try out technology products. And not just can they try them out. But there'll be supported with an external evaluator to trial them to see what works to make sure that the impact of them is really at the heart of what's happening. Because I think there's a huge range of technologies out there for schools, and it's very difficult to know what's right for you, what works in your context. So we're working with schools to do that applications are open now for any teachers in the audience. So I can talk a bit more about that later. I think the other side of the fourth industrial revolution that's really important is the human element of it. So although technology has lots of potential to change how things happen, we also need to make sure that young people in our education system are prepared for what changes are happening to the world of work and the world around us. And so the really other key part of Nesta's work is thinking about the future of work and how we can support both young people and adults in the labor market, to make the most of the changes in our changing economy, but also, as Nimmi was talking about to mitigate some of those risks of automation. So making sure that young people have the skills that To be honest, robots technology can't do so. The social and emotional skills that are key for, for all young people, creativity, problem solving, being able to work in a team, which I think we feel are often missing in our education system today. So I'm happy to talk about that a bit more, but if anyone's got any questions, but I think those are the two elements really, that we've worked quite closely Leon,

Camilla Turner
12:01

Thanks very much. And now over to Aftab Hussein from Bolton College.

Aftab Hussein
12:05

Good morning, everyone. My name is Aftab I look after a learning technology team at Bolton College. We've got a team of six developers. We're very much a hands on team. I've been at the college now for about five years. And prior to that, I've been in the education sector as a teacher since 93. In further education, and also looking after schools ICT needs during the early 2000s, up to about 2010. Since joining Bolton College, we've had the good fortune to have tremendous amount of freedom in terms of the service that we develop. So since arriving there we've investigated problems that all our teachers our students face on a day by day basis, and we've had a good opportunity to develop adaptive learning platforms, personalised learning, where the content adapts to your specific needs and requirements. As you progress through your online tutorials, and also more recently, over the last two or three years, we've developed ada, which is a campus digital assistant. And that's been supporting our students and our teachers and our support team since April 2017. So now it's in its third academic year, ada continues to learn and expand and grow and it supports our students and our teachers and our support teams across larger number of contexts. And problems are that they face on a daily basis. So I'm happy to talk about that later on. Also, as well we've had good fortune of getting the support from Nesta recently to develop a formative assessment solution, whereby teachers for the first time, are able to pose an open ended question to their students when they're on a low margin system. In the past, students have had a very narrow toolset in terms of assessing the students for the formative assessment. In terms of yes or no questions, multiple choice question, drag and drop questions that be very close, or closed answered questions. Those questions techniques are very valuable. But being able to assess the student on an open ended question is probably more valuable, because you can assess a greater level of understanding that your students have about the topics. So over the next year or two, what we're going to do is, can we develop the service so that a teacher at Bolton College or potentially anywhere in the country, propose an open ended question to a student on a given topic? Train the machine learning model and the classifiers behind it? And the machine can support the students in real time with feedback as he or she answers that question. We've discovered over the last 12 months or so that students actually welcome the feedback that they get in real time. They say the quality of the work improves. It's like having a virtual teacher next to them, giving them advice and guidance as they deal with the actual answer, it doesn't give the answer away. It just gives them advice and guidance, just like I knew the teacher will do. But what's happened is that the quality of work has improved. And the students actually welcome the fact that they're getting this personalised service from a computer support there and answer writing. So we're also tackling other problems and issues as well on our campus. We're looking at automating the report cards. So we've got 11,000 students across the college. And one of the problems or one of the tasks that I've given my team is, can we produce 11,000 report cards in three seconds for all the teachers and students across the campus? So far, we're making really, really good progress. And it's incredibly easy to do and, but finding out that it takes a burden away from staff. It makes life for a student easy. We're finding out that in a small campus like Bolton and I'm sure in your schools and colleges as well. Life does get complicated. There's lots of information, too much information to digest as individual level, nevermind the team level. And these, this ability to automate and offer timely information to everyone around your institution really, really helps. So that's another one of our projects that we're hoping to develop. And over the next 12 months, one of the things that we're hoping to do is teach eda a copious amounts of knowledge and information about the various subjects that we teach at the college. So we're hoping to crowdsource as a knowledge the domain across multiple subject areas. So one of the first areas that we're talking about is health and social care. So as our students are working with the local NHS Trust, the nurses, the teachers or practitioners at the hospital at the university and the college will teach ada about health and social care and about being at the hospital as a nurse as a whole. practitioner and any nurse at the hospital and the students at the College of the uni will be able to seek advice and guidance from eda when the issue or a question about a topic. But we'll repeat that across English, maths, geography, science, chemistry, biology, and all the other subjects are offered across the national curriculum.

Camilla Turner
17:20

Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for some great opening remarks. And I'm now going to ask a few questions to the panel before opening it up to the floor. And just a reminder for you all to go to slido.com to input your questions as you think of them. And now we know that tech giants like Google, Twitter, Facebook have huge amounts of power in the world today, more so than individual countries or governments some people say. On the one hand, maybe we want these companies to impart their knowledge and their skills on the next generation. They know best, what are the future, what the future workplace looks like? What the skills that our children need. But on the other hand, how much input do we want them to have in schools? Do we want them to own data of all schoolchildren in England, for example? So my question is to the panel, what are these tech giants doing in schools? Are they doing enough or are they doing too much? And Dr. Allison, let's start with you.

Dr Alison Clark-Wilson
18:20

So in my role at UCL which I just mentioned, the UCL EDUCATE program is working well, today, we've worked with 250 educational technology, startups, entrepreneurs, to help them to be more research minded about the way that they're building their tech. So really thinking through if they do what they expect to do, how they know that it works. And in that role, we interact quite closely with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. And what's really interesting and isn't a surprise is that there's two things going on in the in the companies obviously, they've caught they've already cornered the market on everything. With respect to the information that they have about us, and about our own our activities in our in our whole lives of which, if you're a school student, it happens to capture that period of your life. So they hold immense datasets, which gives them a huge advantage if we think that many of the future tools and resources and administrative support mechanisms for schools and colleges may well be built out by them, because they already know an awful lot about us. But what obviously one of the ways that one of the challenges they've also got is towards their corporate social responsibility goals, which means they all are looking at doing things for good in the education sector. Now in some places, it's very country or parts of the world specific. And in other places, it's quite local. But they definitely the doors are open and they are interested in collaborations and partnerships. But it's about what's the sort of grain size, what's the sort of interesting things we think ought to be doing with them. So they're sitting waiting to I'm very aware Amazon are about to launch an education marketplace. So an Amazon education marketplace, just like you get your deliver tomorrow, what's it going to be delivering tomorrow for you, we've got to shape that we've got to shape that. So things will happen. We need to be part of the conversation. And one of the best ways of doing that is to really find out and get involved with the different initiatives that will be coming out as as they evolve. If we're not part of the conversation as educationalists it will just happen without us.

Nimmi Patel
20:41

Thanks, Alison. And one of the things that I've heard in my role as Policy Manager is that tech companies are finding more and more difficult to access talent. Now, that's because of the skill shortages that we're seeing across the economy. So it makes sense that they would be invested in a sense in the pipeline of talent, you know, and we like to call it from classroom to boardroom educating people all the way throughout their careers. Now something that is quite terrifying is the influence of the kind of corporate global companies can have on our education system. But for me, it's the skills of the future. We don't know what they're going to be like, we don't know what the fourth industrial revolution will bring. The only thing that we can do is manage it and manage our response to it. And in that sense, I truly believe that our education system needs work but has the skills to thrive if we teach young people and people going through adult education as well kind of rescaling how to rescale and the concept of lifelong learning. And that's something that we in the UK don't do as well just yet. But as automation and new technologies become more important. That's something that we're going to have to look at now corporate need to do more in a sense and in the school industry to help you young people identify pathways into careers. So it's all good and well us telling them, you know, you need to have these kinds of hard skills, soft skills, human skills, in order to do well, in order to have the capability to rescale and retrain for the rest of your life until you're 75. Gosh, but we, what are we doing? What are we giving them with those skills? are we helping them identify routes that they want to take? Are we helping them understand the pathways into a career that may not be traditional or a little bit alternative? Are we giving them the full range of what they could possibly do with with the skills that they have and the passions that they have? So in that sense, I truly feel like industry needs to do more with perhaps the carriers and enterprise company with the Department for Education to really try and and showcase the breadth of the opportunities that you can have. And it's not just about focusing on people with STEM skills or STEAM skills. It's the range that young people have.

Camilla Turner
22:57

Dr Allison, did you have another comment?

Dr Alison Clark-Wilson
22:59

I just wanted to give a shout out for the industry because they are doing something on the career side. And there is a future learn MOOC in development for teachers and lecturers in schools and colleges that is being developed by the Coalition for Careers Education, which has the big tech players around the table. So they are very aware that they need to provide a resource into schools and colleges to help teachers first to have some sense of the landscape. And what are those skills and jobs and needs in the near future, like 10-15 years, which might be about as far ahead as we can look, but look out for the Coalition for Careers Education, who are trying to do something in response to that.

Camilla Turner
23:46

Fantastic and a question parents are often asking, How can I future proof my children? How can I make sure that my children and getting the right skills they need that will allow them to thrive in the workplace and 10, 20, 30 years time. Now, a lot of our school curriculums have been designed a very long time ago, technology moves a lot faster than school curriculums can. So I'd like to ask the panelists, if there was, if you could name one thing that schools are teaching that is completely out of date, and so just be axed from the curriculum completely. And then another thing, which you think is crucial that every child should learn and should be on the national curriculum, in terms of technology really. Start on this side.

Aftab Hussein
24:34

There's lots of old practices in our schools and our across the education sector. The obvious one is around assessment. The fact that our youngsters are assessed at the end of a particular key stages. And why can't a young child be taken examination or assessment whenever they whenever they're ready to do so and accelerate their learning with the technology around them. So a young child in a primary school or a student of key stage 3 or key stage 4 should have the freedom to learn at their own pace with the support of the teachers around the school and, and if they're able to do so, to undertake assessment when they are ready. Now, the skills to be able to manage that as a young learner is important because that's the skill set that you'll need as a young adult and as an adult when you enter the wider economy, because in order to survive in order to stay a productive member of the society, you all have to learn continuously during the course of your lifetime. That skill needs to be learned at a very, very early age in primary school, and the second school and six forms ecologies, without that mindset, a lot of our youngsters are going to struggle when they leave full time education and also as well that need a new set of tools to enable them to do that, at the present moment in time, we are surrounded by a lot of legacy systems. And the don't naturally lend themselves to this new environment that we're working in. And also, it'd be really nice if the youngsters in our school and our teachers are made more aware of the new breed of technologies around them. They're living in a world that's utilising the data sets to inform the services out there access, they needs to be aware of how to use those, how to utilise them, what's ethical and moral issues around those. What part they're playing that and some of these people will probably be working in a digital economy. And as the digital economy grows, the more and more of our youngsters will enter that marketplace in that industry. And it'll be cool if our youngsters when they enter the industry are aware ethically and morally around the design of these services, so that they can design and nurture and have an input to these types of services as well.

Camilla Turner
27:03

Fantastic. And Nancy.

Nancy Wilkinson
27:05

Yeah, I'm gonna probably chicken out a bit of your question because I don't want to upset any specific subjects teachers in the room today by saying something that we should definitely scrap but I think your point about technology and kind of specifically relating to technology skills. So I think it's fantastic that young people are learning more about computer science and digital technology. But I think it's the combination of different kinds of skills. So I think really, what I would say that children and young people need to maintain is the breadth of skills that they can get from school. So it's fantastic to learn digital skills. But actually what we know from our research at Nesta, is that the digital skills that will most be in demand in the future are those that are combined with creativity and problem solving artistic skills. And, you know, alongside that, young people need the scientific critical thinking skills to challenge some of the the things that are happening in our world. So I think it's that kind of breadth of knowledge and skills that combining different different subjects and different kinds of learning that is most important, particularly when it comes to understanding and using technology in the future.

Camilla Turner
28:17

Great. And Nimmi.

Nimmi Patel
28:19

I would completely agree with all of those points that Nancy made. And I would also say that a way to do that is probably to embed digital into every single subject rather than teaching ICT and computer science as a separate entity. If we embed digital into geography and history, we can get that creative, creative thinking and problem solving needed in order to progress but I guess ultimately, right now, I would remove computer science because it's too hard for the average child or young person. And it's, you know, not many schools are offering it and it's really, really difficult and boring. So that's what I would remove.

Dr Alison Clark-Wilson
28:59

Thank you. I was sitting here reflecting that I think I could have been on a panel on this conversation 25 years ago, because this discussion is not new, it's getting more and more critical as time goes on. The one thing I dropped tomorrow would be the long division algorithm at key stage two, completely pointless, completely pointless, and what I will be putting in its places, the use of sensible age appropriate digital tools to support the key things we need to develop from the moment children step into formal education. So for example, we will question when handwriting and writing and the relationship between them become more or less important when we can speak into technology very accurately, and it will allow us to express things we want to express. So the role of the way that we communicate which is changing dramatically. We start to at least think about what that how the primary school curriculum and experience for learners will begin to bring some of this technology in so that there isn't this chasm between the school world and the world in which our children our young people are growing up now.

Camilla Turner
30:12

Fantastic. I'm now going to open up to questions from the floor. We've had some great discussion points there. So hopefully we'll have the questions up on the screen from Slido but we will also have a roving mic. So stick up your hand if you think of a question that isn't on Slido. Okay, so our most popular question that starts off with that one. How should academies tackle the funding challenges around introducing new technologies? Who'd like to kick us off there? Yeah.

Aftab Hussein
30:48

The actual funding challenges, there are challenging every school academies face on a day by day basis, however, technologies do lend themselves to make advances in the way we spend our money the way because things out. Like for instance, adopting cloud services is no longer new. But 10 years ago, our schools started to adopt cloud based services. Now they're common place, and user devices used to be quite expensive. Now, when they're attached to cloud based services that become a lot more affordable. If students and teachers are bringing their own devices into the campus, again, that becomes more affordable. If you start to create managed services collectively, not just as a single institution, that single Academy but as a collection of schools and academies in your own region or nationally, then the affordances that could lend themselves to you as well. And something that would have been out of reach suddenly becomes very achievable. And also, don't be frightened about the new technologies. Like for instance, we use ada as our campus digital assistant But it's incredibly affordable to use. So even a small college like us can just pay 10s and 20s or 30s for pounds a month touchwood keep that going. So don't be frightened about AI and machine learning and natural language, because these services are incredibly affordable. And the big platform providers recognise the the financial constraints our schools have, and the pricing models do reflect that when they come to pricing these new services.

Camilla Turner
32:29

Fantastic. And Nancy.

Nancy Wilkinson
32:31

Yeah, so I obviously agree with everything that Aftab said. I think one thing I you know, obviously these in these days, every school in college is struggling with with funding pressure. So, you know, I won't I'm not the Secretary of State for Education, sadly, so I can't change that, unfortunately. But I think I would say is that it's really important for schools, colleges to have the information out there to make the right decisions about technology because I think there's some figure that the department uses I think around is at 1 billion or something is spent on learning technologies. And so a lot of that can be wasted on things sitting in the cupboard, things don't get used. So investing in loads of iPads, but not really thinking about what you're going to use them for can be, you know, what we hear from schools quite often and or one teacher is really keen and invest in one thing, and then a new teacher comes along, and they think, oh, I don't know what that is. So putting it into the cupboard, so having a really, really good strategy for your edtech tools for your own Academy or school, and making sure that the evidence is there. So a little plug for our edtech testbed program, which is really letting schools try out products for free with some really robust evaluation alongside it, which we hope will support academies, schools, colleges to make those decisions in a more informed way. Which can be really difficult because you know, a lot of technology out there will promise the world and sometimes under deliver so haaving some really good independent evaluation of those technologies, asking the critical questions of those technology providers about their impact and how they can improve it, how they can prove it is key to not wasting the money. So I can't give you the extra money. But hopefully we can help you make sure that you're not wasting it.

Camilla Turner
34:17

Great. And moving on to another question. Now, how can schools address the disadvantage gap when it comes to access to digital technologies for their students? Who'd like to start us off there? Yeah. Dr. Allison?

Dr Alison Clark-Wilson
34:31

So I mean, as a research academic looking at that question, the first thing is, how are you defining the disadvantage gap? So what is the gap? What are the technologies that some children have access to that others don't? Do you really understand? What are the precursors to that gaps? Are there thing initiatives or projects that you can start that might focus in on a bit of it so the whole problems too big, break it down into something tangible that you can then look and see if you can do something about it? So if it is a lack of access to a digital device at home, do you know that exists? What's the scale of the problem? What would it cost to try and address that? Are there corporate, commercial local partners that will help fund a project to address a specific need that you've identified that's tangible, that would allow you to frame a story around doing something about it. So knowing these problems exist is one thing, sitting down and planning a project or initiative with a clear focus that you can bring in potentially partners because I'm aware there's no money. So bridging the gap. That's where approaching tech partners in your areas who all have got Corporate Social Responsibility goals for their businesses, that's the conversation you can open up there. So it is about really understanding in detail that problem a little bit more specifically, and making a plan and involving partners, collaborators, resources to try to do something about it. I think the main thing is do something.

Camilla Turner
36:02

Great. And I'm going to skip over the next question because it's kind of similar to the one I asked earlier. Great minds think alike. So moving on to, new technologies in society are empowering individuals, how are new technologies empower learners of all ages to reflect upon and drive of their own learning? Who'd like to start there? Yeah.

Nimmi Patel
36:26

With new technologies, we'll be able to learn everywhere in anywhere, we're already seeing an increase in kind of distance learning courses for adult education, distance learning masters flexible learning, and I think kind of new technologies will enable what we already know what we want. We want flexible working, we want better work life balance, and I think new technologies can provide that when it comes to learning as well. It can be as flexible as you want it but it also means that you have access to this range of information which at first can be overwhelming, which is why Teachers should go through the distance learning platforms that eventually schools I think may have all the platforms that they have in schools right now, to showcase that this is what we're going to do step by step as to not to overwhelm. I think that's an important part as we how we as people process the new technologies as well.

Camilla Turner
37:18

Great. I think we've probably got time for one final question. So it's good one at the bottom here. Some of you have spoken about the need to learn new skills, but what new skills do teachers need? Who'd like to start off there? Yeah, again.

Nimmi Patel
37:33

So teachers need to be able to understand and perceive the technology that they're using in order to teach the kids about digital teach young people about this. Now the National Center for Computing Education for those of you in this room who know that which is a fantastic thing. It's got 84 million pounds of funding in order to do just that, in order to help teachers understand computing and help teachers implement that in their own in their own classrooms and I think the more people know about this center, the more we can, the more we can do.

Camilla Turner
38:05

Amazing. Well, I think that’s time, we better wrap up there. But thank you so much everyone for coming along. Thank you to all our wonderful panelists. You've had some great food for thought there. And I hope we can all go away and think about how what role we can play in the fourth industrial revolution.

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