- Welcome everyone.
And thank you for joining us.
Thank you for joining us in
this very special event tonight.
Digital education after COVID-19.
My name is Amanda Berry, and
I'm Associate Dean for Research
in the Faculty of Education
at Monash University.
And it's my pleasure to be
hosting this event tonight
on behalf of our Faculty of Education.
We're delighted to offer
this panel discussion
with prominent international
thinkers in digital education,
who are going to critically reflect
on some of the social
economic and political issues
and implications of COVID-19
for digital education.
But before I introduce the panel,
I'd like to begin by
acknowledging the lands
on which we meet today in Australia,
and recognize that
sovereignty was never ceded.
I'd like to specifically acknowledge
that the Wurundjeri and
Boon Wurrung people,
communities of the Kulin Nation,
are the ongoing custodians of the land
on which Monash University now stands.
We pay our respects through our research,
teaching and learning to the Wurundjeri
and Boom Wurrung Elders,
and their past present
and future communities.
So we're really pleased to have everybody
joining us tonight.
I believe we have over 800 live stream
our registrations from across the world,
and I've just been
informed from Hong Kong,
China, The Maldives,
Japan, Sweden, UK Greece.
Good morning, good afternoon,
good evening to everybody
everywhere, wherever you happen to be.
And we encourage you to make
this an interactive session.
So you can send your questions
and comments at any time
through the YouTube chat function.
But just to remind you need
to be logged into YouTube
in order to be able to do this.
And for those on Twitter,
please feel free to tweet
throughout this session.
Use the hashtags and tagging on Twitter
that you'll see soon on
the presentation slides.
So just a little bit
about our research agenda
in the Faculty of Education.
So our agenda speaks to the challenges,
both contemporary and
enduring of education
in its various forms.
We're committed to the
improvement of education
that enables full and
equitable participation,
and that has a lasting
and meaningful impact
for those who it's intended to serve.
We bring our agenda to life
through a focus on five
interconnected themes.
And these things are
shaping digital futures,
which is the focus of tonight's session.
Reimagining educational leadership,
educating for diversity and inclusion,
enhancing health and wellbeing,
and transforming and
teaching and learning,
with a central connecting
theme of fostering fair
and sustainable futures.
And throughout this year
we're hosting seminars
that are highlighting
each of these theme areas.
And obviously tonight's
focus on digital futures.
And you can see on the next slide,
some of the examples of the
work that has been carried out,
in the Faculty of Education
through this particular theme.
So, you see the rise of digital tech,
and shaping digital
futures through exploring
datafication in schools so looking at ways
in which digital data can
be used for social good,
improving feedback
through (faintly speaking)
speed back effective.
And a chat bot that is served
to provide evidence-based
mental health to support teenagers.
So, to tonight's topic, digital
education after COVID-19,
and let's be optimistic that
there is an after COVID-19,
perhaps it's a COVID tolerant society
that we need to be thinking about now.
Now let me introduce
our distinguished panel.
First of all, we have
Professor Neil Selwyn,
from the Faculty of Education
at Monash University.
And thanks Neil, he's
just waving to you now.
We have Professor Felicitas Macgilchrist,
and just turning on us now
to say hi, hello Felicitas.
She's a professor of Media Research
at the Georgia Eckert Institute,
University of Goettingen from Germany.
And we also have Dr.
Ben Williamson, and Ben,
we can see you now.
Ben is the Chancellor's Fellow
at the Center for Research
and Digital Education at
the University of Edinburgh.
So now it's my great pleasure
to hand over to Neil Selwyn,
and he will be facilitating
the panel from here on in.
Thank you.
- Thanks very much Mandy.
Again good morning, good
afternoon, good evening,
and welcome to this really special event.
As Maddie says, my name's Neil Selwyn,
I'd like to introduce
again, my two colleagues.
So we've got Felicitas
McGilchrist and Ben Williamson
who are joining us from Europe,
and we're all researchers in
the area of digital education.
So, the three of us are just
gonna take 15 minutes or so
to reflect back on what has
just happened in education
for the past few months of lockdown.
And also think about the shift over
to emergency remote schooling.
And I think this is a
really important thing to do
for two reasons.
I mean, first of all in the short term,
I think we need to start conversations
about what can be done better
for the remainder of the pandemic,
for further school shutdowns,
further university online teaching.
Because unlike the vibe in some countries,
and I'm looking at Ben
in the UK in particular,
we're not out of this by a
long stretch of imagination,
if, and when there are further shutdowns
and we're thrust back to remote schooling,
we need to ask questions about
what can be done differently,
what can be done better.
And second, I think we need to seriously
talk about the longer term ramifications
of this really extraordinary moment.
The school and university shutdowns,
and are prompting some
serious pushback for reforms,
both to compulsory and tertiary education.
And talk about what the
new normal should be,
is now taking place at breakneck speed
and substantial changes are afoot.
And so I guess Felicitas, Ben and myself,
if we do have common ground,
it's probably that we
believe that educators,
the broader educational community,
families and students need
to be better represented
in these discussions.
So we need to get conversations
going about future forms of education
that we want to be seeing established
and take control of the agenda.
So, we're gonna be talking
about two aspects of this,
and for a broader set of discussions,
we're gonna be focusing on the digital.
I just wanted to do a
little bit of plugging
for a couple more publications.
If you're interested in non-digital stuff,
and we did throw this
Monash rapid response
in the beginning of April, after COVID-19,
the longer term impacts
of the coronavirus crisis
in education.
21-hot takes from academics
around the faculty,
ranging from things like
mental health and trauma,
all the way through to
professional education
and leadership.
So if you wanna think
about non-digital things,
then definitely have a look at that.
And the other thing I'd recommend
is something that's just come
out on Monday from UNESCO.
And this is a really, really
interesting year report
released on Monday, Education
in a Post-COVID world.
Nine ideas for public action.
I wouldn't necessarily
agree with everything
that they've written there,
but it does give some
really strong provocations,
about the need not to defund education,
not to use COVID as an excuse
to cut back on education,
to give frontline educators
autonomy and flexibility,
and protect the social
spaces provided by schools.
So read interesting bites
there, and just thirdly,
if you are interested in the digital
and you want to hear what
Felicitas, Ben and I have to say
in a more sober considered written spot,
but we actually produced
a fanzine or zine,
should I say with three short pieces,
which we've given away to you for free,
that's a special kind of gift from us,
those of you who've registered,
if not, then we'll put the
links up in the chat soon.
So, let's get on with it,
first I just wanted to set
up proper introduction.
Both for Felilitas and Ben.
First of all Felicitas hello,
how are things going over in Germany?
How has the German education system's
been dealing with things?
And what's the current state
of schools and university
in Germany?
- Yeah, thanks.
Nice to be here.
Nice to be talking in this
sitting and a situation.
Germany the school's closed in March,
just two weeks before the Easter holidays
in most of the States.
And each State,
sort of dealt with it in
a bit of a different way.
Some of them said, "that's
it, there's no schooling,
"there's no teaching, there's
no learning until Easter."
Other States said, okay
"we're gonna switch now to
online teaching straight away."
Then there was the Easter holidays
and then there was the
whole, okay, how do we do it?
Homeschooling, has
become a word in German.
Homeschooling in English
has become a word in German.
And at the moment the
schools have opened up again,
they opened up slowly
with the older kids first,
and then moving now, I think
last week, two weeks ago,
in all Federal States now, all
the kids are back in school.
But they're back in school,
usually only in the mornings
and usually every two days.
So the classes are cut in half.
And what we're seeing is now,
especially is one thing
that really interests me
is that when the classes are going back,
in the Federal State where I live
no group work is allowed and
no partner work is allowed.
The classes that all
set up in straight lines
looking forward.
So you've got this real
return to kinda teaching,
which hasn't really been in
many schools for a long time now
where you've got forward facing students
working on their own papers
and their own documents.
That's one set of ideas to start with.
- And so the shock of actually going
from what was quite kind of
radical form of remote schooling
back to, as you say,
this kind of almost 19th
century arrangements,
really, really interesting.
- Yeah.
And one thing is the kids
are so pleased to get back.
So this is something that I've
heard from lots of spaces,
kids who also didn't
really like school before
are really like school now.
- Yeah, no, I think we're
gonna go on and talk
about that later on, that's
a really interesting take
on things.
Ben, over to Scotland, I would say the UK,
but I guess Scotland
is very, very distinct.
It has its own education systeming.
How are things going over there?
And how're schools coping with things.
- Yeah.
Well, I suppose education is continuing
by turning millions of
homes into kinda platforms,
spaces where (Ben
laughs) education happens
undergirded by these giant
global infrastructures.
And schooling continues
in this very virtual form.
In Scotland we're in the
last week of 10 children
haven't returned since
towards the end of March.
So we've had no contact with school,
well no, presence since
schools whatsoever.
In England, there was an
attempt to get children
back to school just
after the half-term break
in early June, most of that collapsed,
a lot of parents didn't want
to send their children back.
The schools couldn't accommodate
the numbers of students
with physical distancing regulation.
So. it's been quite chaotic
and highly contested
and controversial.
Yesterday we learned that when
we were planning in Scotland,
our government was planning for a return
to a blended model of schooling
on the second week of August
where it was expected
children would be in school
maybe two days a week and
having a change over and so on.
Completely intriguing, as
digital education people
to see members of Scottish parliament
having ferocious debates
about blended learning,
which is a term I'm sure it
was very unfamiliar to them
just a few months ago.
Anyway, we discovered yesterday morning
that the government has decided,
now, all the children will be
returning to school full time
in the second week of August.
Despite the fact that
most teachers and schools
have just spent the last
several weeks planning
for a blended hybrid type
physically distance return.
So yeah, I suspect a lot of
educators and school leaders
are gonna be very busy
over the coming days
as this term wraps up for most people
should be expecting by the summer break.
- I mentioned earlier
the Australian educators
listened to this.
They're gonna be breathing
a huge sigh of relief.
I mean, I have to be honest,
looking from 10,000 miles away,
the word chaotic is probably the word
I would probably imagine the
UK and particularly England.
Anyway, let's move on from that
and get to the meat of the discussion.
I guess I wanna take a bit of time
just reflecting first of all,
about what we've all been through.
Ben and I think us, we all have children,
so we've all personally been through this,
but actually as Ben says from
an academic point of view
as well.
We're interested in what's happened.
I mean, how can we make
sense of what's happened
so far from the first wave lockdown,
from the perspective of digital education.
And I just wanted to kick
start the conversation
by thinking about three
so-called of success stories
in terms of technology.
We are speaking through
Zoom and then via YouTube,
but these big platforms have suddenly
kind of come into toe.
I'm also interested in the rise
of direct to consumer ad tech,
which seems to be a thing now,
and also this bottom up
user generated content.
So, I mean, just to start off with Zoom,
but other examples are available.
I mean, Ben, first off,
what do you take from the rise of Zoom
and Microsoft teams and
these other big platforms
which has suddenly now touted as saviors?
- The example of Zooms
maybe quite interesting.
Because I think it illustrates
perhaps something of the
enormous compromises,
that have to be made
when these new platforms
are rolled out into new spaces,
like into educate or into
education practices out there,
they're kind of scale that they have been,
clearly on the one hand Zoom
is being offered for free,
and it's enabled interaction to occur
between teachers and students,
but it's obviously come
with huge privacy issues
that the others have
been tracking in depo.
And it proved highly hackable as well
with the pulling examples
of racism, bombing
and so on in universities,
particularly in the
States as I understand it.
But at the same time, as I understand it,
some of that controversy over Zoom did,
and push back against it did,
lead the company to have to address
some of the shortcomings of the platform
and make some effort to kind
of respond to those problems
and respond to the outrage
of many of the consumers and customers
who were suddenly forced into a position
where they had to use this thing.
- Yeah, it certainly struck
me as a case study in how,
what seems to be a huge
platform is incredibly shocking.
I don't think they seem to thought
about privacy to begin with.
And even now they're doing
things like introducing
pay for end-to-end encryption.
So you actually have to pay to be private.
So it's really interesting
how these things are.
They kind of multinational
and huge platforms,
but they are just very,
very kind of making it up
as they go along.
I mean, Felicitas you
wrote in the Techlash Zoom,
which I put up earlier about how schools
were using technology to
kind of do the same things
that they did previous,
I guess Zoom would be an example of this.
- Yeah.
Zoom is one way of sort
of translating something
that we always did, which is a certain way
of communicating in a whole class setting.
Zoom lets us translate that
into the online setting.
But it does always change
a little bit and that's,
it's like the intention
is to translate something.
So we all feel comfortable
the teachers talk
and just giving instructions,
students are talking among
themselves et cetera.
But at the same time, what
we're seeing with Zoom
over the alternative
video conferencing systems
that are also being used a lot is
that the students are often,
school students, university students,
are often without their video.
So they're muted in the video's off
and they've actually got
Facebook going at the same time
where they're chatting with
their friends at the same time,
which enables that kinda
chat to each other,
which was also always in
classrooms a little bit,
but it's different now.
It's actually more freed up, it's open.
I think there's something
important to Germany
also these open source
alternatives to Zoom.
And a lot of the critique
oriented that Zoom
was because it got so big so quickly.
And there was some like Jitsi's
the open source alternative
which looks almost the
same, works almost the same,
but and let's say had become
so big and so successful.
It would have also got
the same sort of criticism
that Zoom had got.
It would have been a
place for racism bombing,
Jitsi bombing, whatever as well.
But I think there's an
interesting discussion there
about the open source alternatives
and what they need to be
able to work at scale.
And what Zoom, and the
investment that's behind Zoom
that makes it work better.
- Yeah, and also, as you say,
I think nobody was prepared for this.
And so it's really interesting
to see how all of a sudden
it has scaled up.
I mean, Khan Academy is another
really interesting example,
moving away from these big platforms
in a way makes Khan Academy in a way,
I guess it's indicative of the rise
of direct consumer technology?
I mean, Ben, you study the
EdTech market quite a lot
and Khan has been a force
in EdTech for quite a while.
I mean, what maneuverings
have they managed
to leverage from the lockdown?
And what does this,
tell us about this rise
of direct to consumer EdTech
everyone's getting so excited about?
- Yeah, yeah.
I'd say, I think we've seen
a huge surge of interest
in this idea of consumer
EdTech, that's been reflected in
investor enthusiasm in this space,
and a kind of dawning realization
that the EdTech market
into the future is likely to
depend on parents primarily
and perhaps students themselves,
particularly in relation
to higher education.
So we're in this position now
where the understanding is that schools
and universities in the
next couple of years
are likely to experience
extraordinary austerity.
So they might have deals
in place with providers,
unlikely or less likely to
be making lucrative deals
with new providers as they understandably
have to deal with making cuts and so on.
So, the market moves to
those parents and students
who in the short term may be
experiencing new hybrid models,
but in the long term may find
that these are actually attractive
kinda supplements, to the
existing kind of provision
they're getting from state education.
So I think there's that
direct consumer model,
points perhaps to an expansion
of what people have previously called
the kind of shadow education market
of private supplementary
tutoring and so on.
So, now there's been a
huge increase in kind of
tutoring apps and platforms in China.
I believe (indistinct)
received a $1 billion
venture capital investment
in the midst of the pandemic
as its customer numbers
absolutely exploded.
That particular platform
(speaks in foreign language)
claims that's using
artificial intelligence.
So it's gathering
information about its users
and then adaptively
responding in a supposedly
intuitive machine-learning based way.
So it's consumer EdTech spaces interesting
because of the way it kind of shifts
the kind of market focus and
because it helps to bring
in new kinds of techniques like AI,
which are perfectly suited to the idea
of molding around the individual
and the individual now of course is,
more and more going to
be at home and needing
the kind of assistance of that
private supplementary tutor,
who is now a robot.
- And if we're all
individual consumers online,
consuming educate, as soon
as you go back into school,
it undermines the idea
of what you're doing
in a kind of public education classroom.
And it's also really interesting
to think about the connections that Khan
is not just one man standing
in front of a video,
giving Maths lessons.
I mean, it's a multi,
multi-billion dollar business.
And I guess it's interesting to see
where they've got funding
on through the crisis.
And Google seems to be kind
of pumping money into Khan,
Khan use Google Cloud products.
So there's this kinda network,
which I think we can get onto later.
And I can remember all
the criticisms of Khan
a few years ago that the
actual pedagogic quality
was terrible, but some
of the content was wrong.
All those discussions seem
to be kinda forgotten about now.
And all of a sudden this
is the big new thing.
You mentioned a few others.
I mean, Felicitas, I know were you talking
about Zoom Maxis earlier?
As a kind of possibly a good
example of how these things
might be disruptive in a good way.
- Well, yeah, the
interesting thing for me,
one of the interesting
things about Khan Academy
is also the kind of content
that they have been pushing
spreading over these
last couple of months.
And indeed they've got a lot of units
for the part of the
website that's specifically
for corona for COVID related
and they've got schedules, the plans.
And like Ben said earlier,
it's in the whole schedule
the plan is really half hour plans.
And the family is built
in there the whole time,
that they should be a
family member assisting
the kid working on this stuff.
And what they've also got is
basically it's educational TV,
like back from the 70s, a
lot of what they're doing.
And this is one of the first
things that Germany did as well
since the school's closed.
All of the state television put on
all the educational TV stuff
all morning long so the
kids had something to do.
It's also a really interesting
kind of educational
technology.
But, and Khan math for me
it's only the math part.
And it's actually designed as
a hybrid way of teaching math
with digital technology.
It's been going for a couple of years now,
just based in the U.S. but
it's and not for profit.
They've got a lot of money,
a lot of funding to try this
up, but it's not for profits.
They're not paying back investors.
And one of these things
that is very important
is they embedded in their normal
software before COVID.
The idea of half the
class working individually
on their laptops or whatever devices
and half the class being in a small group
with teachers together.
So there was always part of the technology
is that the teacher works together
with a small group of kids
intensely person to person.
And then the kids would swap view,
those half would work on
the math and the computers
and the other half with the teacher.
And that's one thing they've
done which is really the social
and the technological together.
And another thing they've
done the right from the start
is to think about which students
are represented in this math,
what kind of math problems do we have?
Maths' one of the most
ideological kinds of input
you can have in schools.
'Cause you've got to have
the maths problem puzzle.
You've got to put three
plus two into words.
So what kind of puzzles
and they've deliberately
changed from the start to
have puzzles which talk,
speak to all sorts of different lifestyles
and family constellations
and not just sort of
white middle class heteronormative images,
which are often used in maths puzzles.
- So it sounds like it's
actually been designed
with some kind of forethought in thinking
about learning and teaching,
which is rare for some of these platforms.
- And I wonder to what extent it's,
because it's a not-for-profit,
it's got a different set of
priorities baked into it,
not to make a big distinction
between commercial
and noncommercial, but just
to think of what that means
if someone's coming from a
not-for-profit background.
What they're writing into the software.
- So Amanda we're gonna
talk about design later on
as one of the key things
we can take forward.
It's just interesting you
mentioned educational television,
because the third thing I
wanted to talk about was TikTok.
Now there's been great
excitement over TikTok
I'm Generation X.
I've got no business on TikTok whatsoever,
but I understand it's been
quite the thing over lockdown.
Homemade peer-to-peer education
content, 15 second videos.
So recently announced plans to commission
hundreds of experts and institutions
to provide educational
content to the platform.
Felicitas what's so great about TikTok,
I mean, and other alternatives.
Is it really user generated
content and bottom up stuff?
- Ah, I mean, it's complicated.
It's always so many
different things at once,
but I think TikTok is,
there's just so much
crazy stuff on TikTok,
which I think is fun to see,
and the dance moves and stuff like this.
But what we've really observed
when kids are starting to use TikTok
and when they're doing it themselves
there's this idea of the challenges.
I think challenge and
working things through,
and there's it's a really low level,
there's a low barrier to participation
in this kind of thing.
Lots of kids have smartphones,
of whatever kind of smartphones they have,
so they can make their own videos
and they're producing something
and they're experiencing
themselves as producers
in that moment.
And to do something for the school,
something which is relevant.
That's the thing that I
think's really exciting
about TikTok, yeah.
- But on the other hand, I mean,
it's a huge multi-billion
dollar Chinese-owned company,
and it was trying to monetize
its hashtag talk and you
content way before coronavirus.
So, I mean, it's really interesting
in terms of user generated content
that you've still got this
big behemoth behind it.
- Yeah.
- Ben, what do you make of the appearance
of TikTok as a kind of major player now
in this education market?
- Yeah, personally I'm a
little old but TikTok though
I see my son using it, sometimes
to my horror (Ben laughs).
I was completely intrigued
and in actual fact,
but really enamored of the idea that
this was being used by
apparently millions of students
to share study tips and
create their own videos
and share them with their peers and so on.
And that the numbers
that were being talked of
in terms of use on the
learn on TikTok hashtag
were really quite eye watering.
Yeah, these lovely ideas about
what can actually be achieved
through forms of participantries,
social media, based sort of learning.
And it kinds of things
that many people working
in this digital education
space have been exploring
for years and both pointing out
what are some of the problems
and issues that arise here,
but what are also some of
the really strong potential,
demonstrates these kind of
bottom up AI learning cultures.
I think we probably need
to understand better
as they expand through spaces like TikTok,
but at the same time, when
they announced last week
that learn on TikTok
hashtag would be turned
more specifically into a kinda dedicated,
educational channel and
they would be hiring
loads of strategic content partners,
to develop new content that
kinda completely changes
the mortal age.
So then the sizes celebrities
in the UK, we have
people like Rachel Riley
as a well known celebrity mathematician.
We have activists and so on,
to attempt to draw in a larger audience.
And one of the, I think it was
the General European Manager
of TikTok specifically said,
"we hope that this will be
more appealing to advertisers,
"advertisers who are
interested in the huge market,
"but who have previously
been a bit off book
"by the kind of the edgy field of TikTok."
Kellogg's those kind of brands and so on.
So we're in a interesting position
where we have really nice
ideas about user generated,
peer learning cultures and so on.
At the same time, as we have
merging ideas about education,
basically as a kind of vehicle
for the advertising industry.
- Yeah and if there's one way
to make social media not edgy,
it's get skills in education involved.
Felicistas you wrote in
your Techlash article
about other kind of more probably
genuine bottom up things,
you were talking about
on courses and bar camps.
And some of the things that
have been going on in Germany
that really do seem to be
quite of more grassroots
and more communal?
- I think this is exactly the point.
Whenever anything just
to come back to TikTok
for a little moment.
And Facebook was never a grassroots thing,
but when students were
talking a lot on Facebook,
that was where the
communication was happening.
Then schools and educators
started to use Facebook
as a way of reaching
kids in their own space.
And kids left Facebook.
And then TikTok, they were doing it.
And it was their thing when
it starts to be embedded now
with advertising and with
teachers getting TikTok
activities.
They're gonna leave TikTok
again, this movement.
Yeah, and in Germany
there's been a lot of,
there's a couple of hashtags on Twitter.
(speaks in foreign language)
and these where there's a lot
of exchange among teachers
and what sort of ideas they can do
when a Twitter person
asked for, as teachers,
"okay, give me one activity
"that's not a printed out worksheet."
And there was a whole
bunch of answers to this,
which I think it's really
interesting because none,
almost none of them, where
what we would call EdTech
or what we have been calling
EdTech over the last few years.
It was like an airplane challenge
where you have to make an airplane,
fold it up, let it fly,
measure the mass, take video,
upload the video to the school.
Save or send an email or whatever.
Okay, then maybe the
learning management systems
legacy EdTech but, all of that,
it's a video, it's a camera,
it's doing something
physical in your own space.
And then sharing that.
And there was by-camps and
courses set up by volunteers,
or set up by a small set
of people who had also,
I mean, their job is also to
offer teacher training later.
So it's not completely dissociated
from a commercial side,
but it's by no means these big platforms
and these big actors, it's like for people
who have their own set up
where they offer teacher education.
And they've been doing a lot of online
open space sessions,
come with three hours
and a half baked idea,
and we'll help you out by
the end of the three hours,
have something you can
do in your classroom,
oriented to teachers, that sort of thing.
Yeah.
- I guess the problem is that
if you try and scale it up
to a kinda national level as
you say, the magic disappears.
I mean we've had an interesting
comment from Jillian,
just reminding us that not all
kids can access smartphones.
And I would like to add to
that actually not all kids
can access smartphones when
they go back to school.
We're in a State of Victoria,
where smartphones are banned,
smartphones are being banned.
So there's this kind of
interesting juxtaposition
that kids are being pushed
to kinda do really cool stuff
with devices at home.
And they're coming back to school,
and it's like the 19th century
as Felicitas was saying.
Now, I don't wanna just
fixate on technologies.
Zoom and TikTok are all great,
but I think we should talk
about the wider social
implications of all of this.
And I wanted to ask you now
from your point of view,
what you think the big lessons or issues
that have emerged during the
past few months have been?
What's been utterly predictable
from our previous research?
And what's perhaps been surprising?
And maybe even a source for hope,
as I wanted to do this in three sections,
thinking about schools and families
and possibly universities.
I know that's quite a depressing thought.
Ben, first of all, I mean, what
have you made of how schools
in Scotland or the UK
turned to technology,
have schools coped or not coped?
- I think it's probably
been extremely varied.
I would point out that I
think most of us are probably,
only able to report fairly anecdotally.
We've been unable to go and
do the kinda detailed research
that maybe we might
have liked to have done.
So, in large part,
my impressions of what's
happened in Scotland
and to confine to what I'm hearing from,
or what I'm experiencing
along from my own children,
and hearing from other parents.
But certainly it's been
a lot of Google classroom
and ClassDojo and so on.
I think parents have been kind of,
parents were put into a position
with the kind of obligation
to agree to be part of these
platforms and to subscribe
to these products
and to give consent now
if they haven't already.
So that they can participate
in G Suite and so on.
But I think some schools
have been providing
kind of daily lessons with
the whole kind of Zoom
teacher stuff here in the
particular part of Scotland
I'd live in, because of
data protection concerns,
teachers haven't had any video interaction
with students whatsoever.
So everything has been entirely mediated
by Google Classroom or the equivalent,
with lots of children being sent off
to various other products and so on.
So, I don't think there's
been particularly coordinated
and I don't think that's not
something I would want to
criticize schools for,
I don't think schools are being supported
at all well, here in Scotland.
I think what we saw in
England was indicative
of kind of panic that there
was no coordinated response,
prior to the Easter break back in April,
and then the sudden appearance
of this kind of coalition
of organizations with a
brand new online school.
Called Oak National Academy,
backed by organizations like Teach First
and a range of foundations
and so on, and so on.
I think this is for me, one
of the kind of big issues
that's come out is that
as parents and schools
have cast around trying
to figure out what to do,
we've had the emergence
of some perhaps unexpected
new sets of alliances and groupings.
Who've been able to provide apps speed,
selections of resources,
some of that's coming from
the big commercial providers
who I think we probably
would have predicted
would move into this space really quickly.
And some of it's come from
more unexpected spaces
like these new Teach First aspirations.
These kinds of groupings
have come together.
And in the particular example
about National Academy,
at some very quickly
managed to get support
from the department for education,
the main education ministry in England,
who've kinda seed funded it.
So it's been interesting
language here about government
as a seed funder and
an investor and so on.
And we had very quickly, yeah,
a kind of national online
school for England,
to try and full of
settle these very, very,
kinda unsettled waters
that people were floating
around on up to Easter.
I suppose it's quite interesting
that this National Academy,
it provided loads and loads
of online lessons and so on,
was just awarded this week a
further 4.3 million pounds,
to prepare for next year.
So it's gonna expand with
something like 10,000 lessons
and a series of curriculum maps.
But it's completely unknown organization
that didn't exist three months ago.
Will basically be the platform
for the national curriculum
for England next year in
the result that schooling
is happening in at least
in a hybrid kind of form,
or maybe taking place at home if we,
as seems very likely in the UK,
go back into some kind of
lockdown and school closures.
So I think that's a really interesting,
I just have to add one tiny
other thing, which is both,
we're talking about EdTech,
and we are talking from a kind
of global Northwesternised
perspective.
And if we look to other countries,
then the dominant trend
is often been towards
educational radio.
That radio has been a huge
enabler of access to education
in low middle income countries,
in a way that probably far exceeds
or could compete with the
kind of scope of EdTech
in our own context.
And I think we should explore
that much more carefully,
who creates educational radio
and how does that get distributed?
I heard stories of radios literally
being kind of transported out
to small villages and so on.
That's a really interesting part of EdTech
that perhaps we know far too little about.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, going back to
the Oak National Academy,
that wasn't put out to tender
that 4.34 million pounds,
so either very innovative,
speedy thinking or what
Australians might call a wrought.
(Ben laughs)
So you can guess what that means.
And it's interesting, you
said we are completely talking
from a global North perspective.
I was in a conference earlier this week
where someone was talking from an NGO
that worked mainly in the pole.
And around that region, she was talking
about the same thing,
radios, books, preloaded
kind of burner cell phones,
and all sorts of very innovative,
but kinda low tech solutions.
What I found over in Australia,
is there's a huge gap
between the private schools
and the public schools.
The private schools really
did seem to be ready
for this, and all of these have been ready
going in for synchronous lessons
five hours of Zoom a day,
and very kind of sophisticated things.
And one of the things I'd love to see
if there was a future
shutdown is the private sector
kinda stepping up to kinda
support public school teachers.
But on the flip side,
some of the less advantaged schools
have been actually going low tech
and just photocopying out packages
and delivering them once a week,
having no online interaction at all.
So, I mean, there's huge differentials
even in a kind of very privileged
country like Australia.
And then, I mean, we had
a comment from Chandra
earlier on talking online about
the rise of online tutoring.
And again, we've seen this differential
middle-class households,
very able to buy resources,
having the time to support their children,
but also invest not only in these apps,
not only in these direct to consumer apps,
but indirect online tutoring,
this idea of the Zoom
shooter they can just sit
and look after your kid while
they learn at school has
been a thing as well.
And the other thing which
I've also seen in Australia.
Well, two things, schools being flexible,
the best schools being flexible,
not kind of assuming that
everyone's on the same side,
the same timeframe and same synchronicity.
But also the lack of
conversation about data privacy
and child protection, technology,
governments and accountability.
I mean, those are things I
think that we really do need
to get our heads around the next time
when go down to lockdown.
But just very quickly before
we move on to the future,
oh, before we move on
to families actually,
we'll have schools being coping in Germany
Felicitas, is there anything else to add
that we've not covered already?
- I think one that maybe specific,
or maybe that I've observed in Germany,
is there a real disjunction
between the public discussion
in the media, the talk shows
and the practices in schools.
And there was one of the big Germany talks
was had of affair, tough affair.
And they had a bunch of politicians on,
and the teachers and the parents,
and it started the
whole thing was oriented
that teachers have not that enough,
teachers have not done enough.
Germany has messed up because
Germany is not digitalized
enough over the past few years.
These are discussions we've
been having in Germany
for a long time.
Germany feels in these public
discussions very much like
Germany is not the
forerunner it should be.
It's lagging behind.
This has been discussion
about lagging behind.
And it specifically, I
try to turn that round
and say you know what?
Germany is a forerunner
in those data privacy
and data protection discussions
that you two have just mentioned.
They've not rushed in to buy
into lots of these commercial platforms
because of the data privacy
and data protection,
and data security issues.
We know from Sweden, Thomas
Ellen was talking about Sweden,
that lots of schools are very autonomous
and more schools are working
with Google Classroom.
Google Education, in
Germany, almost no school
is working with Google Education.
It's not acceptable.
It's not okay.
So, there's one thing.
So there's this teacher
bashing going on in the public
and it's not digital
enough, it's not teacher.
Teacher is not doing enough,
but on the other side,
when we have a few research projects
where we've been accompanying
schools for a few years,
and I was talking to the school teachers
and some head teachers and things,
and what they're
reporting is that teachers
have done a massive amount of
preparation in the background.
They've been doing stuff all weekend
to try and get things ready.
And they're specifically
orienting sometimes
to those kids that are
at danger of being lost.
The families that need more support.
So, in the public sphere,
the parents are speaking,
who have a certain cultural
whatever background.
So that they are speaking
in the public spaces.
Those are the kids that the teachers
are perhaps not orienting to as much,
because this is an assumption
they can deal with it themselves.
That's one thing.
And we've really seen this that schools,
parents are supporting the schools
that communicate their decisions.
If a school says, "look,
we're trying to make sure
"we're keeping all kids on board.
"That's why we're not
talking to you as much"
then the parents are
happy to not be talked to.
And this attempt to, as
you said earlier, as well,
to reach the schools to
reach the students sorry,
to meet them once a week,
students that don't have the technology,
the parent, the teachers
sorry, are cycling there.
Sitting on a park bench at
one and a half meters distance
and handing over a packet of paper
and talking through the week
and saying what's happening at home.
That sort of connection isn't
visible in the public sphere
as much as that some parents are not happy
'cause they're just getting print outs.
- Yeah, one of the things
I'd really love to see
as a much more kind of open conversation,
just reflecting on what
everyone's actually
really been doing, and maybe
kind of just swapping stories,
both good and bad for at the
time we have to do this again,
because so much of this has
been kind of under the radar,
the amount of emotional labor
that teachers are having
to be put in and parents as well.
I'm gonna move on quickly
actually, 'cause we're from,
we wanted to talk about
the future as well.
And we've talked a bit about families,
apologies for not talking so
much about higher education
or indeed vocational education.
That's another hour that we
could do if we're invited back.
I want you to just move on
to what's gonna happen next,
this longer term picture.
And as the pandemic
progresses, and eventually,
hopefully as Mandy says,
we can reach a stage
where we've worked to have
to live with the virus.
What else has been put
into place on the long run,
there's under the guise of
kind of this post pandemic
new normal?
I think I described it
in a previous podcast
as dark forces are gathering,
which is a very kind of
pessimistic way (Neil laughs)
of looking at it.
It may maybe a bright new revolution
and rethinking of
education's underway if I'm,
I mean what trends and
coalitions and ideas
that you're both picking up on?
And what do you make if at all?
I guess, first of all,
Ben, I mean, you've
hinted at this earlier,
this kind of pandemic power networks,
these mobilizations of corporations,
I mean what are these networks,
and what do we need to be aware of?
- Yeah, so it was in the
piece that was in (indistinct)
so what's really struck me is
I suppose my attention was first drawn
to our various commercial organizations,
I mean Google Classroom
and Microsoft and Amazon,
and so on that seemed to
be trying to take slice
of the pandemic pie
and schools as it were,
but very quickly became
apparent and actually
what we're really
looking at here are vast,
coalitions and alliances of
all sorts of multi-sector
types of actors of various sizes,
which have in the context
of the COVID-19 have coalesced
and seem to very quickly negotiate
a whole bunch of shared
aims and aspirations,
which have both short term
and longterm trajectories.
In the first instance, it's
all about enabling access,
and reducing the potential
for widening inequalities,
and improving equity and so on.
In alliances that include
actors as diverse as UNESCO
and the World Bank and
the OACD, and Google,
and Microsoft and Zoom and Khan Academy.
And a whole bunch of other NGOs,
and civil society organizations and so on.
But there's something
really interesting going on
if we think from a kind
of policy perspective
about these new kind of policy
networks that are formed,
in a specific context
that have a specific set
of relatively short term concerns.
But which are then
becoming the kind of base
from which to set out a
whole bunch of longer term
reformatory aspirations.
So, an organization like the OECD
which is a partner in
this big UNESCO coalition,
is very strongly promoting its vision,
which has had for a long time
of a kind of digitally enabled,
reformed set of education systems,
which are much better configured
to delivering the skills
required in a digital economy and so on.
And it's now in alliance
with Google and Microsoft
who talk very similar kind of language,
who seem to now have in a very similar
longterm reformatory aims.
And to have set out the kind
of the organizational networks.
And in fact, the technical
networks to enable that to happen
because they've managed
to get Google G Suite
and Microsoft 365 embedded in places
which it probably otherwise
never would have gone to.
These infrastructures have
eaten into new spaces,
new territories.
So, there's a really
intriguing policy angle,
which needs following up the
figures to come here though.
I think the future of
education in many respects
is being crafted into
being very contingently,
through these new organizational alliances
and through the kind of technical systems
that they're expanding into
all sorts of new spaces,
including into people's
homes, these families lives.
- I got to conspiratorial about this,
and I guess if the UK government,
the English government are
just giving 4.34 million
away to their mates.
I mean, maybe Microsoft,
Google and this kind of,
as I say, these big networks
are better than that.
Are they acting in bad faith?
- No, I don't think they're
acting in bad faith.
I think they are providing
essential support
to education systems in the short term.
I think, as any academic
of education would do,
we need to ask serious questions about,
where is the kind of
locus of power and control
in determining what gets taught in school,
in determining what kinds of resources
are presented to students
in terms of control
over the curriculum and all
of the kinds of organizations
that we're seeing in this
space now are in many ways,
forming into coalitions to seek,
to determine what that future looks like,
but also in some respects
competing with one another,
and trying to translate the various
different organizational interests
into something that they can
pursue together more strongly.
That might be that those
futures are extremely beneficial
and they will reduce inequality and so on.
But I still think we have a,
should make that research
commitment as critical academics
to understand those
processes and the dynamics,
of future making that we
see going on right now.
A huge scale.
- Absolutely.
And also the obligation
that these actors have
to actually stick around.
I mean, things like old
school, for example,
as soon as they kinda get bored or work
and there's not profitable, you pivot,
but then you just leave
a whole bunch of students
and parents and families in the large.
Moving on to another thing.
And Felicitas I was really interested
that you were talking before about design,
it was really interesting
that example you gave
of the maths platform.
I mean, what kind of design
issues are you seeing
kind of coming up that might give us hope?
- Yeah, I have to start
with a knothole though.
I'm thinking about design,
like exactly the kind of things
Ben was talking about.
There's a specific design behind those.
And if we've got at the moment,
maybe three different
kinds of design orientation
that are being embedded into
the whole education system.
And the one is this kind
of infrastructure stuff,
the Google Classroom,
the Microsoft Office,
it's background, and it's
not designed to do stuff
you always did in the digital space
mostly, but it's then
you've got this huge power
to be unfolding in there.
And then the second
kind of design is where
things are really about
relations, about communication,
about making sure those
kids don't get lost,
some finding some way to keep connecting.
And in this little semi
in Mexico 90% of teachers
are using WhatsApp.
To discuss, WhatsApp has become
an educational technology
'cause that's the low barrier
way to contact everybody,
to get everyone involved
in the communication.
And that's like the core,
it's almost like it's suddenly
this whole connected learning,
the connected learning alliance,
connected learning kind of a
way of understanding education
as the interest of the student,
plus the relationships
plus the opportunities
to translate something they see.
This has become like,
from many parts of education there,
I think in lots of different
parts of the world,
the basic, this is like,
this is what we do.
And that wasn't the case before corona.
So this is the design
elements going in behind there
I was thinking about
releasing some communication
and an interaction.
And this is something that
I've described previously,
like the last few years.
It's like a marginal discourse
that needs to become more central.
Now there is more sense
that it's like, right,
but wait a minute,
what's completely missing
from this discussion,
of the communication into action,
which focuses on individuals,
and on classrooms and on these
sort of focused settings.
What's completely missing
is a kind of design justice agenda.
And there's a lot of exciting
research on design justice.
The Design Justice Network
Sasha Costanza-Chock,
whose has just written a new book
about this design justice thing.
Where the idea is, how do you design,
participatory ways and socio-technical
ecological networks or learning settings,
educational processes, which center
those users who are usually marginalized
and usually not thought about.
And that is an example using embedding
diverse people into the image.
This is just one tiny aspect,
but there's so many different
ways that we need to change
the materials and the learning,
and the learning apps and the software
that have been used to include students
who are not usually thought of
when these are being designed.
Yeah, the problem is that these,
sort of designed you
can't just do it like this
Microsoft and Google, they can just come,
like, okay, there's a pandemic.
We can jump in and we can do something.
This participatory design,
you can't do from today till tomorrow,
suddenly make new stuff.
- And it's slow work.
And they talk about and
designing from edge cases.
So we've had a few comments
about immigrant children
who can't speak the language
of the country they're in.
Kids with special needs.
I mean, these are the kind of users
that never really tend to be designed.
And I guess the design justice approach
is to design from those edge
cases and then kind of working
with which is just a different mindset.
Now we've got a few minutes to go,
I know Ben has to go and
do some home schooling,
likely in Australia.
I just needed to go to
bed, but just before-
(Felisitas laughs)
- we left
- two things I want to talk about.
Just one thing to Ben,
you've been tweeting recently
about, you're seeing this
kind of emergence of social,
emotional learning, is that
kinda post pandemic solution,
right?
What's going on over there?
It sounds horrendous?
- Yeah, well, I think
probably we're gonna see
a big surge of interest and promotion
of social and emotional learning.
There's obvious the huge
concern over the impact
of this COVID experience on the physical
and mental health of young people.
And in some cases, obviously children
will require additional support.
But I think we need to be aware
there's been a longstanding attempt
by various different
organizations to measure,
and assess, and improve
social and emotional learning.
And different organizations promote that
for a variety of different reasons.
And one of the reasons is because social
and emotional learning is seen,
or kind of non cognitive skills
that are seen as a substrate
to academic achievement,
which therefore has some
kind of economic value
in terms of producing certain
forms of workers and so on.
So I'm just wary of,
kind of straightforward assumptions
that actually drafting in
a whole bunch of social
and emotional learning resources
that are available and are out there
and are being promoted pretty strongly.
Also invite all sorts of other agendas
and concerns into our schools.
Yes, clearly we need to attend
to the wellbeing of children,
when they return to school or
if they don't return to school
and they're remaining in their homes.
But I do think we need
to be really careful
about what kinds of subtle
changes we'll see to very ideas
about sort of purposes of education,
focusing on the non-cognitive
over the academic.
And so on that we might
see emerging from that.
It's something that I think
we just need to follow,
and try and understand the dynamics
and the effects of much more clearly
over coming months and years.
- Yeah, I find one I'm interested in,
and you've written before
about the comp side complex,
this kind of allows psychology
and computational science
and how EdTech is kind of yeah.
Right in the middle of all of that?
- Yeah, it brings all sorts
of new forms of measurement.
I mean, there are all sorts
of platforms out there now,
Panorama is one of the biggest ones
in the States for example,
it's used in thousands of schools,
it's supported by the Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative.
It's promoting itself pretty
extensively at the moment
with a whole raft of new
surveys and instruments
and data visualization and analytics tools
to enable schools to assess
students' health and wellbeing,
their social emotional
learning, their growth mindset,
their grit, and all of
these kinds of things.
To assess all of that at a distance,
as a way then of identifying
particular targeted support
as required.
I think there's one indication
of just how extensively
a lot of children who've
gone through this experience
are going to be measured
over the coming years?
They can be measured in
terms of learning loss,
they're gonna be measured
in terms of learning gain.
They're gonna be measured in
terms of health, wellbeing,
social, emotional learning.
They're gonna be turned into graphs.
They're gonna be the most extensively,
statistically analyzed bunch of kids,
in the history (Ben laughs) of education.
(indistinct)
- Finally, finally, finally,
we've got a couple of minutes to go,
but I just wanted to finish on, I mean,
what do you think the
educational significance
of this moment actually is if
we look back in 20 years time,
is this actually genuinely
a once in a generation
tipping point or a gain
changer of education?
Or is it just a blip that
might just fade away?
I mean, clearly the actual pandemic itself
is a global public health disaster
and the loss of life and the
societal disruption has been.
Is kind of off the
scale and was gonna scar
us for a decade at least.
But in terms of digital education,
I mean, is this really a significant,
as we're thinking is at the moment,
is this gonna fundamentally alter things?
What do you think Felicitas?
- I think two answers,
and the one is, there's been
a few surveys in Germany,
of teachers, what are you doing now?
What impact does it make?
And like 85%, say there's so
much more digital education
and more than half of them definitely
gonna use more technology later.
So, and there's an aspect
in Germany that the access,
which was never there before is now there,
whether it's donated laptops,
or there's been some funding
for people who have benefits,
so they can buy hardware.
That access, the hardware is there.
Now, so the decision in
what direction it goes
in the future, can they be
made on a different basis.
So the question is what
decisions are made?
About what kind of future we want.
And that's the first thing.
The second thing for me is though,
it's become quite clear that
crisis are what maintains,
and maybe this pandemic
was just one crisis.
This is something that
would be theoretically
with not necessarily crisis
that what need to change,
but now you can really see it.
And what we can imagine in the future
is there future crisis are coming.
Ecological crisis, different crisis,
and each crisis is gonna have
some sort of unexpected leap,
unexpected jump.
And we wrote a paper last year,
imagining three futures,
and then none of these three scenarios,
the three imagine some sort of crisis.
When I look back now and I think,
how did we not think about
some sort of rupture?
They were all three futures,
which sort of float in
different directions from today.
So if we have a crisis now, who can react
to a crisis quickly?
And this is the thing of
slow and quick from before.
Who is able to provide a
quick fix, a quick solution?
And which kinds and that's like Google,
it's like the big ones,
Microsoft, et cetera.
It's also the big all sorts
of different corporations
in different levels
who've been working slowly
in the background and now
can offer a quick solution
to the sudden new situation.
Which means that if we want to develop
a different kind of future for education.
When we're convivial educate,
convivial technology is in the foreground,
respectful design, sort of keywords.
Then we need to know make sure
people that are in position to
develop a longterm strategy.
So they're ready for the next crisis,
which will come at some point.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, in Australia, we
had a Summer of bush fires,
which we thought was a crisis,
and we didn't do much about that.
Hopefully after this crisis,
we'll be in a more of a crisis mindset.
That's a really interesting
way to think about it.
Ben, is this a big tipping point,
or is it the equivalent
of the millennium book
and we'll forget about
it in a few years time?
- I think we're seeing,
enough signals to
speculate that we could see
some fairly long lasting
and significant changes
to education.
I don't think it's as
simple as just assuming
some kind of commercial takeover,
there's been some nice
explorations of Naomi Klein's
idea of disaster capitalism
and a kind of pandemic shock.preen.
And maybe we see that
reflected in some of the stuff
that's going on in the States
around getting Bill Gates
into re-imagine education in New York,
rip down the schools, you don't need them
when you can do everything the Gates way.
This kind of moment of crisis
is an opportunity to outsource education.
And maybe that will
happen in a limited way.
But at the same time we need to recognize
that in that Gates example, for example,
there was pretty immediate pushback.
And there's a long history
with the Gates Foundation
of a lot of their stuff
never really working,
often with fairly devastating results.
But also if campaign groups,
and educators and teacher
unions, and so on.
Forming really quite
powerful bottom up coalitions
to push back against these kinds of wealth
quick wealth-based imaginaries
that are seeking to change education,
to kinda conform to a particular
perhaps corporate view.
So we might see, well, we
hope we'd see pushback.
I mean, maybe not blind pushed back
without considering what the benefits
of a bit of a rethink
of public education's
never been perfect and certainly
wasn't four months ago.
But I'd like to think that we'll see
the emergence of these kinds of groups,
like perhaps we've seen in New York.
Let's say, hang on, actually
we've got a better idea,
we've got a better view,
we've got a better future.
And it, maybe it involves
a better sense of respect
for teachers and commitment
as Felicitas said
to forms of justice and so on that.
Actually we don't want to roll out systems
that for many appear to
be highly surveillance
and potentially discriminatory.
And I'm optimistic that we will see that.
Earlier on there you waived that document
probably that came out
this week from UNESCO's,
on the one hand, you've got UNESCO
kind of promoting a
lot of these platforms,
but you've got other parts of UNESCO,
as she said with her
and nine public actions,
which are all about empowering teachers,
and respecting their professionalism,
and working with students as stakeholders
and educators themselves as
stakeholders and families,
and trying to rethink how
we respond to education.
And that new UNESCO report
explicitly rejecting,
the idea that public education,
should be built on an
infrastructure of digital platforms
owned by private companies.
So even within an
organization like UNESCO,
we see this kind of conflict,
this contestation over
the various different,
imagined futures, which are are in play.
So, my sense is there will
be a lot of resistance
to some of the kind of dominant
narratives of the future
that we're being told at the moment.
And I think one of the reasons I think
you convened this conversation
was to just to try and seed
some of the critical issues
that needed to be pursued,
not just by people like us,
but by educators, and unions and so on.
- That's exactly why we call it techlash.
The techlash starts here.
I mean, if Google can
renege on the sidewalk labs
in Toronto, if IBM can kind of put a hold
on facial recognition
technology, change can happen.
And we're at this moment,
I think where we can possibly do that.
So, that's exactly what I
thought we might finish,
so thanks so very much.
I mean, thanks so much for
both of you taking time
out of your morning to actually do this,
I kinda strong armed into doing it,
but it kinda worked out really nicely.
So thanks ever so much for that.
And thanks everyone for
watching online as well.
I'm sorry, we didn't
get to kinda answering
all of your questions,
but hopefully you got something
from what we were saying.
And also thanks to Shantal,
Grace, Luke, everyone else
in the backroom team for
kinda making the tech work.
I'm amazed at Zoom didn't fall down.
And thanks back to Mandy Berry,
for bringing everything to a finish.
- Thanks very much, Neil, yeah.
Thank you so much to the panel.
I think, I'm sure you'll agree with me,
everyone that this has been a
really fascinating discussion.
Thought provoking, insightful.
Ben mentioned about these
ideas of putting our finger
on critical issues
and the ways that we
truly engage with them.
And I think the panel
has done a fantastic job
of articulating some of those issues
and pushing our thinking around those
and many of the comments and questions
that people have sent in
also reflect those ideas.
And it's really interesting
to have those perspectives
across the different country contexts,
and thinking about the
context of schooling
in which people are operating,
whether it's from home,
from the physical place of school,
higher education, et cetera.
And I'm also gratified to hear
some of those hopeful messages
amongst the dark edges there.
And it's not all about corporate takeover,
but I really take the point
that it's an important role
for teachers to play in all of this
in how they see themselves pushing back
and feeling their own agency.
And thinking about the
things that are relevant
to their students and their context
and how they take on these
particular technologies.
Think about them.
So, thank you so much,
we really appreciate it.
As Neil has said, this is
not too early in the morning
for Felicitas (Amanda laughs)
and that we really appreciate your time
and your thoughtfulness in
contributing to this panel
has been exceptionally stimulating
and helpful for, I think for
many of us in our thinking.
So, Ben Williamson, Dr. Ben Williamson,
Professor Felicitas Macgilchrist
and Professor Neil Selwyn,
thank you so much for your
time and for your ideas.
And we really look forward to everybody
continuing their participation
in these Zoom seminars
that we're running around our
research agenda at Monash.
And yeah, we hope that you
can tune into the next one
that we'll run.
