0:04 Revisiting the future of education
2:49 Immersive technology
10:59 Augmented and virtual reality
16:20 Possible educational uses
24:30 Existing digital learning tools
35:22 Teaching and thinking
40:46 Ethics
51:27 Face-to-face learning

Revisiting the future of education

The Education Lounge podcast so yeah our first conversation we had on this topic was about two years ago yeah during the first lockdown locked down yeah we started talking about the Education in the future and just the future world as it were like how it would be delivered yeah yeah and we said there would challenges but obviously it’s it’s going that way it’s getting more digital um and then you had the whole Facebook changing their name to metal meta um so you was it so you got metaverse but then what’s the difference between that and cyberspace because isn’t it just the same thing

Branding I guess yeah so so yeah they’ve just it’s for branding purposes but essentially you’ve got loads of and then you’ve got people buying property in the metaverse for like millions yeah like already yeah and it’s I don’t know it’s a bit weird but Do you think education would really like really work in that space or I think it can work but I wrote down a number of challenges um [Music] that the metaverse or education in the Metaverse would have so they’re they’re on that note that I gave you on the note yeah there’s quite a few yeah everybody let’s do some of the positives first before we go into

The negatives um well I’ve always thought like if you hadn’t sometimes it’s hard to get a class or a child to visualize um like victorian england or something like That so imagine you’re doing frankenstein or I don’t know a dickens novel or something like that I mean it would be good it would be amazing if you could bring them back to that time so they can Experience but can you just do that in in vr like without the metaverse can they just be like a well that’s partially what the that’s what vr vrs is in a way it’s a way that you can enter into this virtual

Space or cyberspace um so yeah it’s just a vehicle that you use to actually yeah to get there get to the metaphors and then but it confuses me a little bit this concept because like

Immersive technology

We’re kind of because we live online all the time essentially when as soon as we act it’s just like the screen changes like it’s just how close the screen is to your eyes that’s changing well it’s the whole end point like how immersed you are in it I think if if it gets to a point Where you can’t separate reality like actual life from your metaverse life that’s where the issues are gonna occur I think no elon musk thinks that we’re already Sort of in the matrix so we’re already plugged in yeah I could probably agree but you could you can’t tell because of the like that’s just some that’s the hard problem of mine isn’t it you can’t tell whether you’re okay yeah you’re getting very

Philosophical but but you can’t tell like what’s real and what’s not real because all we all we can experience is all we’ve got is experiences so if you can simulate those experiences in some way then Um and you’ve got and you’re connected to a computer in a sophisticated enough manner then you can sort of stimulate your brain in different ways so I don’t know you can pretty much make reality Indistinguishable from a non-reality well I mean currently they don’t have legs in the metaverse so I think that’s quite they don’t have legs they don’t have legs they’re just like a torso oh yeah they’ll hover around

Yeah kind of like like an emoji for like an apple emoji type thing but have you seen have you seen the videos I think I think gadget shows did one a while ago and there’s people that have done ones recently in the actual metaverse where they try and spend 24 hours In oh yeah I think I think I’ve seen us and and they they were so interesting maybe we did I don’t know we sometimes watch on a lunch on a lunch break a lot of lunch break we watch um I don’t I don’t think we’ve I don’t Think we’ve seen that one together by I’ve seen one of them yeah yeah and the first the first thing on your on your list is exactly what happened to this person that tried to spend 24 hours and it’s their eyesight yeah their eyesight and like the

Like I mean we stare at our screens yeah specifically like all day more than eight hours a day yeah imagine having those screens like here yeah like when you have those mornings When away like yeah like when you were younger like oh you don’t sit too close to screen you’ll get square eyes and all that sort of stuff and now now it’s like we’re going to put a screen on your eyeballs and apparently everything’s now going to be fine yeah those days those um Health warnings sort of disappeared yeah because they used to say that all the time and now it’s like it doesn’t seem to be that much of an issue well I think it’s still an issue it’s just not being pushed as an issue yeah but maybe our eyes will adapt

And just become evolve as it were to evolve into what interesting pixels just like who knows who knows um yeah I think I don’t know that that’s that’s a big problem because obviously if you’re Getting a class to if you bring them to the virtual classroom then first of all the technology needs to adapt to everyone’s eyes so you’re the actual vr headset or whatever Needs to be able to understand how someone sees and then sort of yeah because everyone sees slightly differently yeah and then I mean do you remember the whole um was it blue dress gold dress

Thing oh yeah gem with that yeah so yeah I remember people perceive colors differently yeah and then you’ve got color by blind people as well so all the content needs to be like desirable yeah these days you can do like you can do on your phone you can invert colors and all that sort of thing Um but that’s just a technical issue I guess um in terms of immersion so I think the main thing is immersion with the metaverse because I think there’s plenty of ways you can Learn now online so and we’ve been doing it for years so there’s videos you can look at so on YouTube or some of those um coursera and udemy type of programs that

Um those websites have loads and loads of courses and that kind of thing so that’s the sort of initial issue is the materials that you need to push online learning and then you’ve got I think the hard problem is How do you make a virtual classroom that’s in sort of immersive enough for people to be lost in it and but then maybe it doesn’t matter whether they can tell whether it’s is fake or not all real it just needs to Be not painful for their eyes not too not poor quality so you know things need to work in things need to work it needs to be yeah I don’t know

I don’t think facebook are the people to do that and and then then yeah sorry sorry meta meta yeah you don’t I don’t know because every week I try I do all of all of our like social media and stuff and they can’t even get a calendar to work Or a login to work how are they going to make a whole universe I think I don’t think they’re the ones you know microsoft they’ve probably got quite a good chance actually because microsoft they do a lot of business to business stuff that they’re they’re sort of much bigger Company than people think a lot of the time and everyone knows they’re a big company but like yeah you forget how much they actually yeah you kind of forget how connected in they are and even in in terms of social media they own linkedin they own linkedin yeah

So so they own a lot more than you you think did I know that maybe yeah um but they they’ve got the they’ve recently acquired activision which is yeah that was a big thing um so they’re now pretty much the biggest Gaming company and then they’ve got the xbox cloud obviously xbox as well yeah they’ve been doing this for years and they’ve got I think they’ve got ar glasses so augmented reality glasses but they use them a lot in industry and they’re quite high end yeah should we just Explain what the difference is between ar and vr yeah okay so the way I say is ar because it uses the word augment which means add so augmented reality is when

Thus you superimpose things on the world that you see around you yeah and then I guess the the most the simplest example people will know of is pokemon go remember that yeah sorry well you have your camera on the real world and things are superimposed onto the real world And things like google and apple they’re working on these might even be released by now you know when you’ve got the maps and you’re taking your directions and it superimposes like 3d arrows and like a fox like I don’t know if it’s a flocks to get to where you want to go to yeah and I think Like some museums do that are they in the louvre there’s something involving augmented reality I know that mercedes have that on their maps now in their cars yeah um so that’s augmented and then um virtue is creating of a whole new

Augmented and virtual reality

Yeah yeah it’s much more um you’d say graphics intensive yeah so because you’ve got to drive a whole new world create that whole whole world and insert the subject into it so um yeah usually through using Um like a headset quite a big headset yeah um so you got you got a few I think was it um the most fame so sort of best known one is oculus um which is also owned by facebook it is Now yeah they matter better I’m gonna call them facebook but they’re they’re actually doing very well it’s just that no one really like I think that it was like the best-selling christmas gift yeah

The oculus headset oh 20 you can see into the future christmas 2022 2021 21. I just forgot that yeah um yeah the oculus headset was actually very it sold very well And I think it delivers a pretty interesting experience for um and they’ve got some educational apps and that kind of thing on there but nothing I don’t think they’ve got anything that’s true it’s it’s like a actual Virtual classroom and that kind of thing so nothing that a teacher could use in could implement directly into their lesson very easily but well I mean you’d need like 30 35 headsets

Like I think the the issue of entry is that in order to deliver that sort of experience you’d need first of all enough headset so there’s access issue isn’t there because like now we can reach people all over the world with Online resources and stuff like that but then now you require people to have a headset if you’re going to take it that far and then you need the well a headset with enough power to drive that experience Which chip shortage yeah um sort of comes into that too um and then you’ve got um fragmentation of the development as well because you need

Think about it this way you need someone to deliver a uniform and professional experience um with like few glitches and errors again I don’t think facebook are the ones to do that yeah sorry meta yeah So well I don’t know because I’ve never used an oculus headset but I’ve heard they’re really good but oh no I haven’t used an oculus one um like you know the trimmer google cardboard where you put your phone in and yeah those all sorts playstation did One didn’t know that playstation vr with the little the two handheld things and you can play play games and stuff with that yeah playstation has one and so does samsung with samsung devices and apple apple’s one is in the making

As well yeah and I think like the thing is is that once that I think once that happens that’s when it’s always a way isn’t it people always do these things where once apple like do it more people know about it and the thing is is that thing about you saw that uniformity of experience Um [Music] the sort of if you think about it apple that that’s generally what they delivered the best yeah the ecosystem and that’s because they the a lot of the development is is for Apple devices and then if you have got too many things going on so if you’re developing for too many platforms then you have sort of quality issues um [Music] so if apple

Apple’s headset becomes the main headset then I think the problem is they’ve already um said they’re not entering the metaverse I don’t know about that they probably just I mean they wanted to they wanted to deliver a wireless charger thing didn’t they oh yeah that never came out so I and I think they never wanted to actually they never wanted to create the Iphone as a music player because steve jobs didn’t want to cannibalize the ipod I missed the ipods I miss my ipod but then it will like I think it won’t um

What’s the word I I think it will I think they’ll do it because I think it it’ll be so lucrative that they’ll just be pushed into that market they’ll have to do it right and they’ll want to do it as well and it Sort of fits in with what they want to want to do I think um they they might do down the line yeah but when it’s not sure they’ll hold out for a long time they I I don’t think I’m going into anytime soon

Possible educational uses

What would they I know so gaming is an obvious place where vr will be useful but yeah what do you think what do you think will be the most valuable thing in education Like the most valuable aspect of of having vr I think the the the example you gave earlier was quite quite a good one yeah so because He’s one thing like explaining oh this is what the victorians did and this is what it looked like and but it’s another thing to actually or watching something oh we can watch it there’s nothing to actually like do it virtually be there and then yeah and you could like change your clothes and do victorian yes like that right yeah yeah

Exactly um location you know like geography so that’ll be quite cool yeah like watching watching earthquakes and waterfalls and yeah and you could go to like like you could be teaching a lesson on India or something like china and then you could transport your students to get a place like in a second so it is it would I think it would improve experiences but that the issue is is like how did you Get a whole how’d you get the whole class there without there being sort of technical issues and things like that and which yeah they probably will be they will be yeah I mean when you have 30 people on one wi-fi network

Just using your phone everything slows down yeah so the infrastructure you’re going to need to have virtual reality delivered to 30 35 heads that’s just one class imagine a school without how many classes there are in year groups and subjects yeah So I need some some it’s like next level wi-fi too it’s like the electric car problem it’s like infrastructure yeah it is yeah it’s very very similar yeah and then you’ve got internet barely able to like transfer files from one place to another let Alone like if you’re downloading and uploading like hundreds of gigs like per headset yeah and then you’ve got all the people that have got to code and and design these worlds as well

Like you’d have to have someone um that like like in films they’re gonna design what’s the word I’m thinking of um I’m praying’s gone blank people who does like uh like in films not set designers But like um when they my brain is just completely gone um in films where they’re where they have where they have to like make a whole cgi cgi you need people like that to design These sorts of places to make them realistic which is why at the moment everyone’s just an emoji without legs because no one’s done any of that leg work yeah to make that a reality yeah there’s a lot of you know there’s a lot behind the scenes that need to be needs to be done

And yeah I think like the amount of expertise in the world is limited isn’t it yeah and then like learning like we always experience this is like you can never create enough stuff you can never create enough educational resources you can always create more And then you so you just have an em it’s a bit like it’s like netflix like they produce so many things but then they still need to keep reinvesting to produce more content yep so you’ve always got that issue you’ve got and it’s harder as well Because it’s all it’s all so technical yeah like for the 3d modeling and all that stuff and just coding you don’t have the people able to do it um you got a limit on on

That expertise although maybe maybe computers will just be able to eventually just code things out themselves right yeah that that’s where I draw the line that’s a scary thought That that and like having any sort of implantation like that’s that’s right in your head right well you know that’s some what’s like what’s that project called that near a link near a link you’ve got neurolink they did it quite they did it with some Monkeys quite a lot of them died really yeah oh well that’s what happens like when you experiment on yeah with with this kind of stuff yeah no I I I like I like technology more than most people but

That’s where I draw the line yeah to be honest like I don’t I don’t think there’s much in in a way I’m like it’d be nice to have but at the same time it’s it’s not as if you need it it’s like we’ve been learning for me we’ve been learning for no I was Going to say millions of years but we have but we haven’t been on well like two million isn’t it or something like that millions technically but but we we’ve been we’ve had education systems and so forth and we’ve been you know storing knowledge for thousands Of years and learning new things all the time with no need for a metaverse or virtual worlds to help us but it’s nice that it’s a nice to have but not necessary no I don’t think it’s necessary either

In fact I think the more exciting things are are anything not headset related so like um you know things like google classroom google meets and um yeah things like uh udemy and Online courses and YouTube I think those are the really helpful things because they they they first of all allow people to reach audiences that are far away and that’s with with the essential minimal Very very very minimal if not any cost no barrier to entry yeah so you’ve got those voices able to to reach other places which and we when with little barriers as well like there’s no there’s no cost barriers

For a lot of these things aside from having a device of some kind that can access it yeah which most people already have um whereas like with a headset or something like you you’re sort of you risk sort of taking a huge number of people Out there who can’t afford or access those things um so you’re only really targeting like the top the top peop well the the most privileged people in society and in the world yeah cause I don’t have a headset yet no but It’s it’s more of a nice to have in a luxury rather than a more yeah it’s more of a toy than a tool yeah at this stage yeah so well some you know some companies they use like smart glasses and all kinds of things in their industry

Yeah I think um facebook have I’ve met her I’ve done I’ve done I’ve done a smart glasses thing with ray ban if you’ve seen that yeah and I think I think some warehouse workers as well they use they use smart glasses and that would Like updates and things like that and things from I don’t know how it works but they’re quite expensive each each one but apparently apparently they’re very good um so I guess that’s useful it creates a bit of efficiency in the workplace But then and especially a warehouse environment which can be quite confusing and then you want you want to receive information quickly but then like most students don’t I don’t think they need that necessarily um

Existing digital learning tools

During the sort of lockdown period teachers were using google classroom yeah and I thought that was that was obviously valuable for that situation and going forward it’s a useful tool because Teachers can like students can submit work online and receive feedback and then students can also look back through the work they’ve and teachers can look back through the work they’ve submitted and you’ve got something right there so that’s a very useful tool but then Virtual worlds I mean like I said in in those few scenarios like geography historical events literature that kind of thing could be nice but yeah even then it’s not like

You’re living in that world it’s just you you you’d have your normal class you’d put on a headset go to this place five five minutes and then they had so often go back into it’s just like an addition to normal learning rather than yeah like a full You know yeah and then you’ve got the whole eyesight thing so I kind of think yeah it’s not really especially for young kids because their eyes are still sort of developing so they’ve got to be extra careful with you know have you know been to Spending too much time in front of the screen because your eyes they’re changing shape and suffer and adjusting yeah that’s been that’s probably what happened to me and I can my eyesight is not bad I can see without glasses but yeah after spending

Basically every day in front of a laptop like the whole day yeah every day it’s too much screen time yeah and then if you make that like also part of education and learning all the time is It’s like they their eyes will never have a break from that yeah so well eyesight was one thing um let’s talk about uh safeguarding as well it’s already been the first um harassment claim in the metaverse Isn’t there yeah so that’s now it’s been a bit over for like a week yeah I mean that it was always it was always good yeah it’s bound to happen um I think they’ve got they’ve got something called a safe space I believe where you can like create like

An area around a round shield type thing yeah it reminds me of um joe you watch the um incredibles gem of the pixar film timber yeah there’s the the girl in that it does like a force field It reminds me of that you know he’s just like and then I know I can get into this yes so it’s kind of like that in my mind I mean it kind of it kind of works but at the same time I don’t know if that will be the main will that be the main problem or will it Be hacking that people are actually hacking into yeah they could literally just steal your entire life yeah and pretend to be you yeah and also I think like was it yeah because it’s a virtual

World um and you are you’re an avatar as it were then people can take control of your avatar and then do things as you as you without anyone realizing yeah and then you add the whole crypto Thing into that it’s like everything is just like in this world yeah it’s a terrifying thought to me I don’t know I’m just like I don’t I don’t understand how it adds value to like in a few cases it adds value but then I don’t think it adds much as an as someone who teaches children all the time it’s like I can’t see it being of that much value yeah well let’s talk about that because my main my main thing with this was

Um that children need to be stimulated properly like with other people like connected yeah it’s part of it’s part of development isn’t it like I was gonna mention um like your friend had a baby recently or a year ago yeah um during lockdown And she hasn’t been around people people and what’s that was that done she struggles to well I think now it’s probably a lot better but they they got her into nursery extra early just so she can socialize with others And yeah and that that’s that’s one that’s um that’s without any sort of metaversal vr or whatever that’s just not being around other people physically yeah I don’t think there’s like an element of escapism in the whole idea

It’s like oh the world is so terrible yeah we can’t take the reality of the world so let’s just create our own space our own safe space which is distinct from reality and yet so much better but and all of your problems have Instantly followed you into that world so it’s too is too um acting like god sort of thing making your own world that is you know hubris that’s what you’re trying to say it’s like It’s too much it’s when humans have too much pride um and they they think they can do god’s job essentially um yeah I mean I think I think that’s

That’s true to an extent but I’d say like we’ve kind of gone way past that stage like humanity’s always like we we always try and reach and I think it’s okay to keep reaching but then I think the actual activity of Of creating a virtual world so you don’t have to be in this real one or maybe real we don’t know but to be shielded from the realities of the world By just entering a new one I think is a bit um sort of misses the point a bit I don’t know how much we should actually be concentrating that rather than trying to fix sort of the world around us and make it better and and sort of do the

Basics well um but I mean there’s a lot of money in it I mean that’s that’s the only reason people enter these sorts of profit motive yeah but I don’t I don’t know how much tangible value it adds to You know people’s lives especially as like you know you’ve got some places where people can’t even [Music] um access water or food or or the internet or um you know they can’t or they can’t go to school So I I don’t know how much this yeah I don’t I don’t think it would help us and then the people that can’t that have limited access to yeah education will be learning with books and classrooms and

And I’d probably overtake they’ll probably well they probably will yeah that’s that’s how it works no I mean I I think access to tools and I mean the internet has has improved access to learning but then To what extent can I I just don’t know how much a virtual world will sort of extend and improve learning um well why don’t we talk about that why don’t we talk about the like What’s currently available without the virtual world just currently available online so we’ve already mentioned you’ve got YouTube you’ve got video classrooms and and that sort of thing

You were looking at um pearson’s weren’t you recently oh yeah so pearson is a absolutely massive educational publisher so they also do the say edexcel um exams Um because they are yeah they um they actually wanted to buy our books when we first made them yeah well that was a big endorsement yeah um they they so they produced that they’ve been used to being a sort of Um a legacy publisher for a long time like printing physical books and now like there’s I think they’re doing this um they’re trying to bring their business more online and creating

Things I think designed for people who are learning at home because a lot of people are homeschooling and that kind of thing or they can’t they don’t have access to a good school or all that kind of thing so they’ve created this online platform Um [Music] yeah so they’re trying to replicate the normal like classroom experience online rather than making a whole separate experience they’re also emphasizing though that So like there’s a learning partner which is usually the parent right and then there’s a teacher who delivers the lesson so they they are emphasizing that that link between the teacher and the the person delivering lessons and that

Kind of thing and checking their work is also sort of coordinating with the learning partner and then you’ve got so obviously like video chat software it’s a bit built into the same like yeah window and then you’ve got yeah and then You’ve got like the resources themselves so obviously pearson has a lot of power in that regard because they they own so much stuff um so many educational materials so they can they can make that appear on the screen And that kind of thing yeah um so the child can read and that kind of thing and and like words that they don’t know they can sort of hover over them and I think like so like pop out and interactive and yeah it’s quite good that they’ve established that between the parent and the teacher

Because what we’ve found that often we like with doing what we do the parents that are yeah like properly involved in and know what the children are doing those kids tend to be the ones that are further ahead yeah like when when I think of education and

Teaching and thinking

Being a tutor I don’t really think of it as I don’t even think of it as me delivering information to the student it’s more about eliciting Understanding from the student and building a relationship because you find that students learn better when they’re connected with the person they’re learning with so that’s another reason why I think Virtual reality is a bit like yeah the the artifice in having avatars and stuff like that I think is is isn’t sort of takes away from the learning because you’re not really interacting directly with the

Person yeah which isn’t you’re simulating it which isn’t terrible if you’re an adult but if you’re a child you need that yeah you need that connection adults have they’ve had years hopefully Hopefully years of socialization with people in different age groups and stuff like that so they understand like how to interact with others and you know they’re used to interaction usually um but then children At a very early age need to be socialized so it’s really like a you know like dogs as well yeah it’s very exciting they need to they need to be socialized [Music] but what happens when these children who are potentially in this

World become adults that haven’t yeah don’t know that’s that’s quite scary yeah we can say that now because we’ve been because you know I mean you’ve seen poorly socialized dogs and what they what they do yeah well they either Attack or they hide there’s two yeah because it’s a dangerous dog fight off like yeah um this was weird because like at the same time sort of expanding this the sphere of human interaction With so there’s this theory in social science called the expanding circle and it’s just the idea that as societies move and develop and as communication develops and that kind of thing and you speak to more people and more countries interact

Our morality grows to encompass a larger sphere of people right but then with with with virtual reality and avatars and stuff like that we’ve seen how people act online Yeah just imagine the comment section of any video yeah imagine that imagine that being played out in in real real life well you see that in games all the time don’t you like the way that people treat each other in games though yeah yeah when you’re playing online or Whatever yeah but then if you make all of their interactions virtual so including their learning then so if you expand I mean I I’m not going to say anything about like whether virtually

Whether your virtual interactions or influence because I don’t know how much evidence there is for that like for instance if you game a lot like whether you’re and you play a lot of violent video games or something like that you’re more likely to be violent to people I don’t think That’s that’s shown to be true no I don’t think it is but but if you were to extend all your interactions in life to being virtual ones or most of them like the majority of them yeah from a young age Then you probably wouldn’t know how to act in the real world you have terrible social skills um and that can impact a lot of things in your life and it we don’t know what of impact that

Has on like brain chemistry and that kind of stuff so we don’t know well we can we can assume we’re going to take a we can take a I never assume we could take an educated guess as to what would happen yeah so obviously it hasn’t happened yet so we don’t know but We can extrapolate and figure out roughly what would happen I I have felt a sense of that as in I do think that people more like with the amount of say you’ve got information from all around the world people are less ignorant in a sense of what other countries are doing And that kind of thing and that I think that’s a good a good fact of sort of widening communication networks and that kind of thing but I think if you were to make everything virtual and live in a metaverse

That might not be the best thing for society or the world um and I think yeah the it’s interesting how like it’s always facebook and meta who gets into these kind of Issues like like you know when it comes like they always touch on the side of like the ethical side of things it’s always like facebook information and that kind of thing privacy and now we’ve got this whole

Ethics

Metaverse thing which opens a whole other can of worms up so they’ve got this this habit of attracting lawsuits and just all kinds of ethical issues sort of a rise all in the You think about how much data yeah they get from just your your date of birth and your location and a couple of likes or whatever imagine the amount of data they’ll get on you on and your interactions and your interactions everywhere you go everything you do everything you buy And then the advertising that they’ll include and then yeah imagine you imagine if you had to pay pay to switch off adverts in the metaphors like you’re just living in this world and you’ve got to switch off that advert and I I just don’t trust it I don’t trust it from seeing what they they’re capable of

Doing just from a facebook account yeah imagine just imagine what they could do with but yeah like yeah it’s a new industry it’s an opportunity to make money but I don’t know how much tangible value it adds to the world right Like sure it will make it will make people richer some people who are able to benefit from it anyway it’s the same as everything that makes some people richer and some people poorer I think like for instance the fact like something like YouTube I think is is a bit of a it’s a kind of A good for the world in a in a way because at least you can create stuff and you can reach new people but then I think there’s something slightly more insidious about creating a virtual world

Where people live and interact yeah um um I just want to bring it back to um we did start this and we kind of went down a whole rabbit hole um so the major players in this um Education like online education thing at the moment aside from metaverse and all of that so we had pearson so let’s just recap so pearson’s they’ve got a online online thing where you’ve got a teacher uh a parent a student and they There’s like a video call you said right yes you’ve got videos and you can look at like pop out words and things and it’s all in one sort of place um I think that’s fine yeah that’s valuable yeah um

We’ve then got something like google classroom which can manage your assignments and your homework and your your class timetable you could probably build in some sort of google me yeah there’s there’s yeah there’s google meets like it’s sort of included on it Which is what we use during during lockdown we use google meets we didn’t really use google classroom that much um but we use the calendar to set up all of our classes so that’s a very I think that’s a very useful tool for yeah so managing assessments and then like feedback and the parent can see what the Child has done and hasn’t done what the homework is what they’re learning file management all that sort so we’ve then got something slightly different so uh brilliant you’ve used this before have you yeah I had a little

Play around with it so and there’s this sort of app called brilliant and it’s quite good for like problem solving and the way way things are explained it’s ridiculously the software engineering On that side is is ridiculous because it’s really really interesting and um because it gets the way it gets you to see a problem is is kind of how it’s how that’s how learning should be so Um and by it’s very it’s very much it’s not teacher-led or anything like that it’s up to it’s like self it’s it’s on the student to explore it and I think that’s a great thing um so and then you’ve got um

A masterclass which I’ve used a little bit it’s not interactive but you have like a course laid out of like maybe nine fifteen minute videos on a specific topic um you know the interactions you know linkedin as well they have um You can learn stuff from there too they’ve got like a linkedin courses thing I think if you’ve got like a pro membership right I know I didn’t know that yeah so then microsoft are making their way in yeah um that’s what I mean you’ve then got Um these coding platforms I’ve used code academy before in the past yeah um free code camp and and udemy and these are online no no teacher right I know code academy doesn’t have a teacher you have like a

Course and you have like a window where they show you what to do in the window where you type in your code and yeah and then you complete tasks and things you can ask questions to the community as well so you’ve got a lot of community base I think that’s great like because it gives people access to Um access to learning and and in the case of free code camp is completely completely free so okay so pearson’s google classroom brilliant and masterclass and coding uh platforms like Code academy and free code camp and you’ve got your udemy um and udemy you the music um and then you obviously have the meta and all that stuff we spoke about earlier what would be your let’s say you had to pick two so you’ve got to pick two from the

Pearson’s live chat um with the resources and the teacher meta google classroom brilliant all these coding like the way the coding is laid out so if you had to pick two of them if you were uh Oh if you were interested in coding then I think well I mean free code camp yeah no I’m saying like it’s okay say say you are say you’re teaching or you’re you’re a student of ours like I don’t know year nine year ten year eleven oh that sort of age and you had you you had to pick Two which two would you would you say would be most useful for you for you um probably I mean to be honest you YouTube yeah we haven’t mentioned we haven’t

Mentioned YouTube in this YouTube link if you if you use YouTube then you can access so many different creators and but I guess you need to select what you it’s all then it’s all about selection because you’ve got to trail through What’s and look for what’s good no okay I’m going to give you my answer I would say ideally you’d want a combination of these things right you want a bit of the to teach yourself a bit of the with the teacher And well for for what we do at the moment I would probably have a combination of uh like google classroom and and YouTube and and pearson’s uh online thing because you could have your course laid

Out with your videos and all the file management sorted for you if you if you want to you could sprinkle a bit of like vr in there and whatever to bring some more stuff to life like we’ve seen I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the um apple keynotes when they started talking about ar and vr They had um I think they had the ipad um with with augmented reality and that like put down like you know like a heart or something and you’d see like how the heart would work in like biology or or how this Engine would would would move in real life yeah in like physics and stuff like that so if you could have a bit of that in in with with this that would that would work so I’d probably pick I’ll probably pick those two things so

What would you what would you go for if you’re depends on who you are but if you were to if you were a tutor then google classroom would be the main thing if you want to Access as many people as possible and and teach and you want to manage that then if you’re the most valuable tool if you’re on the other end yeah if you’re in the other if you if you’re a student and say you were homeschooling then pearson tool Pearson online would be pretty useful um there’s loads of tutor platforms too that you can use um alongside that because you you probably want to access more

Than one type of tutor and and have access to various experts um as an if you’re interested in um sort of developing your own learning More and you’re very independent you’re a very independent learner then something like YouTube will be good and I think if you’re concentrating a lot on problem solving skills then brilliance excellent Because there’s nothing I don’t think there’s that much like it out there like what I have seen um it’s pretty impressive what the way that they teach and break down a problem is very logical and

Um it gets progressively more difficult and you feel a sense of achievement once you reach the end of the module so okay so you’d pick you tend to go on long term just bring your background well you’d pick um google classroom and Um similar google classroom slash YouTube and and pearsons with a sprinkler with a sprinkling of other bits I see I haven’t I’ve never used the pearson thing and as a tutor I wouldn’t really need it but It looks really good like it look it looks valuable it’d be interesting if anyone’s ever used that if they could let us know and and say what it’s like because

Well um let’s talk about um just to wrap up what our outside of things are so our model is very very old school like we have booklets um that are broken down

Face-to-face learning

By topic and by week for every for every subject um we did have to go online and we did use google meets for that um and there is practically no parent that has said we prefer online You do true most of them there’s been the odd one where they’ve have to home school or they’re not allowed to come out or that sort of thing but all of our students that were with us um they’re they with with a few strange exceptions They’re not the majority um most people prefer in-person learning yeah um some some some for some reason like like online but yeah the majority and I think it might also just be because they can’t be

They’re a bit lazy they can’t be bothered to walk or something like that for a while for their student yeah yeah yeah for the students yeah but for parents and and that they want and the most students actually They want the interaction they want the yeah they want the interaction with with other people most students most parents also want what their what what the children like as well because they can tell that their child Isn’t progressing learning online or something like that yeah very quickly so they yeah because they they tend to want what’s best for the child and yeah you can tell in most cases they they they prefer in-person learning

Simply because they see that their child is much happier learning in person um there’s a few I can think of a few exceptions but like there’s not many yeah um I think The uh the teacher’s job will be one of the last to go hopefully it won’t go it won’t it won’t be in our time but it would be one of the last ones To go yeah I think like yeah say like driving for instance might be something that goes but again I think that’s that’s actually quite far in the future yeah it’s further than people think yeah but yeah like something like

Teaching it’s because it’s so much it’s like nursing as well it’s like so much about emotional connection then they’re not they’re not they’re not simple repetitive tasks and when you have ethical decision Ethical decisions to make um and that sort of thing it’s going to be it’s going to be a long way off until um some some bit of code can kind of understand that and then you’ve got so many children with different just learning needs Um it’s very tailored you can’t have a one-size-fits-all sort of thing like even if you’re teaching the same topic you might you break it down in different ways for different students yeah sometimes it’s concrete sometimes it’s abstract and use some sort of analogy to explain it or

It’s it’s different depending on each each person yeah we’ll leave it there so our thoughts to finalize are some of it could be useful uh and it’s a it’s a long way off um Where it needs to be and it’s a long way off for what most people think like it’s not going to be in the next couple of years yeah why I think it’s just it’s just about it’s just about profit really yeah it always is yeah I don’t I don’t think it does much It adds much tangible value but um but it’s just last night if you disagree yeah we’ll see where it leads okay okay thanks for watching see you next time [Music]

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