Dick Sblog

DeltaScan: The Future of Science and Technology, 2005-2055: New Technologies for cooperation suggests that these new technologies and a better understanding of cooperative strategies may create a new capacity for rapid, ad hoc, and distributed decision making. The article provides an outlook in which a range of nascent technologies and practices may come together in a way that enhance our ability to cooperate in both established and ad hoc groups. It suggests a 3-10 year timeframe for this outlook to be realised.

This is all very well but how much will the education system lag behind? To what extent, if any, is the world of secondary education acknowledging these developments and enabling pupils to leverage them systematically, rather than simply leaving it to pupils to develop new practices out of school?

If this isn’t happening, why not? Maybe because the curriculum is too moribund, tied down by targets and irrelevant & complex qualification structures; or maybe it’s because most head/teachers still do not use a wide range of online technologies themselves and therefore have little confidence to allow their pupils to use such technologies whilst learning; or (and this is definitely the case in schools I have recently visited) is it because digital paranoia prevents teachers and pupils from using these technologies within the school environment?