Michael Gove at BETT 2012

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. And Dominic, can I thank you very much for
that kind introduction.
I'm delighted to be here at BETT today, and I'm delighted to see so many of you, and to
see so many old friends and colleagues as well as new.
In particular I was very pleased just a second ago to be able to say hello to my colleague
Charles Clarke who I think as Education Secretary probably
did more than any other Minister to bring technology and education together.
And it's fantastic that Charles is still involved and at the forefront in making sure that children
can benefit from the very best that technology can bring.
I also want to congratulate not just those who've shown political leadership but those
business leaders who've been responsible for the huge number of commercial successes that
are exhibited in the hall today.
I had the great pleasure briefly earlier of seeing some of those exhibits and I had the
double pleasure of meeting a childhood hero of mine - Lewis Bronze - who some of you may
know used to be an editor of Blue Peter.
That for me was a thrill, but what was an even greater thrill was seeing the way which
his company Expresso is using technology in order to bring the existing curriculum alive
to a new generation.
And the same sense of excitement that I felt at about 5 o'clock twice a week when the Blue
Peter theme tune was being played is now there in the classrooms of tens and hundreds and
thousands of children thanks to the technology that he and other companies are using to bring
learning alive.
And it's a particular source of pride for me as an Education Minister in the British
Government to acknowledge and indeed to celebrate that British companies are world leaders in
the fields of education and technology. They're going from strength to strength - the members
of BESA have increased their exports by 12 per cent in the last year. Crick software,
which has worked in the USA, Chile and Qatar and which already supplies 90 per cent of
UK primary schools, recently secured their biggest single order ever. They're supplying
half the schools in Moscow, with Clickr 5 literacy software, fully translated into Russian.
There's another British success story, Promethean. They make interactive whiteboards and educational
software, and they've just signed a memorandum of collaboration with the Mexican Ministry
of Education to work in primary and secondary education throughout Mexico.
These are just a few of the hugely impressive array of achievements of British companies
ñ and there are many more all around us in this hall. In particular, Iíd like to mention
all those shortlisted for the BETT awards tonight. Good luck to all nominees, and congratulations
(in advance) to the winnersÖ
Now these British success stories remind us that, all around us, technology has changed
world in previously unimaginable and impossible ways. Most of us carry more advanced technology
in the smartphone in our pocket than Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin used to reach the
Moon.
Every day we work in environments which are completely different to those of 25 or 100
years ago.
Where once clerks in offices used to scribble on card indexes and lived by the Dewey Decimal
system, now thousands of office workers can freely
roam the world from their desktop.
It used to be the case that car manufacturing plants housed lines of workers hammering and
soldering and drilling, now a single technician controls the delicate
operations of a series of robots.
And even in my own profession, if you can call it that, of journalism - When I started
out in the 1980s, it was a case of typewriters and telexes and smokey newsrooms, surrounded
by the distant clatter of hot metal type.
Now if you walk into any newsroom ñ and observe any journalist ñ they're almost unrecognisable
from 20 years ago, and the daily tools of the trade. The telex machine became a fax,
then a pager, then email and SMS. A desktop computer has become a ubiquitous laptop. My
pockets used to be filled with huge mobile phones, then over time as the mobile phone
shrank it was replaced by the Blackberry, and it's an e-reader and iPad, which make
every reporter their own mobile newsroom.
With each new gadget, with each huge leap forward, technology has expanded into new
intellectual and commercial fields.
Twenty years ago, medicine wasn't really an information technology. But now, genomes have
been decoded and the technologies of biological engineering and synthetic biology are transforming
medicine. The boundary between biology and IT is already blurring into whole new fields,
like bio-informatics.
Twenty years ago again, science journals were full of articles about the ëAI Winterí ñ
the fear that the initial post-war hopes for Artificial Intelligence had stalled. Now,
detailed computer models show us more than we ever imagined about the geography of our
minds. And amazing brain-computer-interfaces allow us to control our physical environment
by the power of thought ñ truly an example of what Arthur C. Clarke once said that any
sufficiently advanced technology can seem like magic.
And twenty years ago again, only a tiny number of specialists knew what the internet was
and what it might shortly become. Now, billions of people and trillions of cheap sensors are
connecting to each other, all over the world ñ and more come online every minute of every
day.
Almost every field of employment now depends on technology. From radio, to TV, computers
and the internet, each new technological advance throughout
our lifetimes has changed our world and changed us all too.
But there is one notable exception.
The fundamental model of school education is still - in many classrooms - a teacher
talking to a group of pupils. It has barely changed over the centuries, even since Plato
established the earliest ìakademiaî in a shady olive grove in ancient Athens.
If you took a Victorian schoolteacher into a 21st century classroom, in many schools
in the country, he or she would feel completely at home. Whiteboards may have eliminated chalk
dust, chairs may have migrated from rows to groups, but a teacher still stands in front
of the class, talking, testing, questioning.
But all of us in this room know, that model wonít be the same in 20 yearsí time. It
may well be extinct in ten.
Technology is already bringing about a profound transformation in education, in ways that
we can see before our very eyes and in others that we havenít dreamt of yet.
Now, as we all know, confident predictions of the technological future do have a habit
of embarrassing the predictor.
As early as 1899, the director of the US Patent Office, Charles Duell, blithely asserted that
ìeverything that can be invented has already been invented."
In 1943, the chairman of IBM said that "there is a world market for maybe five computers".
The editor of the Radio Times said in 1936, ìtelevision will not matter in your lifetime
or mineî.
Most impressively of all, my fellow Scott Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society,
scored a hat-trick of embarrassing predictions between 1897-9. He said, "radio has no future",
"X-rays are clearly a hoax" and "the aeroplane is scientifically impossible".
Now I hope I won't join that illustrious company by stating on record that this technology
or that gadget is about to change the world. Nothing has a shorter shelf-life than the
cutting edge.
But we do all need to be alive to the great promise of innovation. And we in Britain in
particular should never forget that one of our great, under-appreciated national heroes,
Alan Turing, laid the foundation stones on which all modern computing rests. His pioneering
work on theoretical computation in the 1930s led the way for Turing himself, von Neumann
and others to create the computer industry as we know it today.
And it was another pioneer, Bill Gates, who warned us that the need for children to understand
computer programming is much more acute now than when he was growing
up. But as we all know, and as the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, recently lamented,
we in England have allowed our education system recently to ignore that great heritage and
we are paying the price for it.
Because our school system is not preparing children for this new world. Millions have
left school over the past decade without the basics they need for a decent job. And in
particular, the current curriculum is not preparing students to work at the very forefront
of technological change.
Last yearís superb LivingstoneñHope Review ñ for which I would like to thank both authors
ñ said that the slump in the UKís video games development sector is partly the result
of a lack of suitably-qualified graduates. The review, commissioned by my colleague Ed
Vaizey who has championed the Computer Science cause in the Department for Culture, Media
and Sport for two years now, found that the UK had been let down by an ICT curriculum
that neglects the rigorous computer science and programming skills which high-tech industries
need.
Itís clear that technology is going to bring profound changes to how and what we teach.
But itís also clear that the promise of Turin is not being fulfilled in our schools today.
We need to acknowledge, however, that governments, if they are to live up to that promise, have
to be clearer about where they can add value. And governments are notoriously flat-footed
when it comes to anticipating and facilitating technical change. Too often, in the past,
administrations have been seduced into spending huge sums on hardware which is obsolete before
the ink is dry on the contract. And sometimes we've invested time and money in drawing up
new curricula, which painstakingly details specific skills and techniques which become
superseded in the real world almost immediately.
I believe that we need to take a step back.
Already, technology is helping us to understand the process of learning. Brain scans and scientific
studies are now showing us how we can understand the structure
of language, how each of us as individuals remember and forget, and underlines the benefits
of properly designed and delivered testing and also reveals the importance of working
memory.
So as science advances, and our understanding of the brain grows, we can learn more about
the process of education and how technology can augment that process of education.
So it's important for Government not to rush pell-mell after a particular technology, potentially
filling school cupboards with todayís answer to Betamaxes and floppy discs. Instead, we
in government need to ask ourselves a fundamental question. What can technology do for learning?
I think there are three points immediately:
First, technology has the potential to disseminate superb learning much more widely than ever
before. Subjects, classes and concepts that were previously limited to a privileged few
are now potentially freely available to any child or adult with an internet connection.
Look at 02 learn, a free online library of lesson videos developed and uploaded by teachers.
It has already delivered around 25,000 hours of teaching via 1000 lessons from every type
of school and college, right across the country: science lessons from Wand Comprehensive School,
music lessons from Eton. And at the same time we should all be aware of the huge potential
of iTunes U, where lectures from the worldís top universities are available at the touch
of a button. Michael Sondell's award-winning lectures at Harvard, previously restricted
to a priviledge few, now available to all of us who believe in social justice. It's
also the case that the Independent Schools Council, teaching leaders and some of the
best academy chains are now working to put material and lesson videos online. And they've
been inspired as I have by the hugely successful Khan Academy: more than 3.5 million students
watch its educational videos every month and Google has now donated $2 million for that
materials to be translated into 10 other languages.
I'm alive to this potential because I've seen it operating at firsthand. I remember in Singapore
just over a year ago, seeing how brilliant lessons can be delivered through a mix of
online and teacher-led instruction. And in areas, and I think we feel this particularly
acutely in Britain, where there is specialist teacher shortage, specialist teaching could
be provided for groups of schools online, so that gives more children the opportunity
to learn subjects that were previously closed to them. That's why, for example, that it's
so fantastic that the Further Maths Support Programme have used the internet to give poorer
families access to specialist help for the tough STEP papers, which dominate the best
universitiesí selection process for maths degree courses. Technology is allowing us
to overcome the current shortage that we have in high-level maths teaching, particularly
in poorer areas.
So as online materials grow and flourish, we all need to think about how we can guide
students through the wealth of information and techniques which are freely available
online and make sure they access the best.
And, of course, online, there aren't just opportunities for pupils to learn, there are
opportunities for teachers to become better at their craft as well. The Royal Shakespeare
Company is working with the University of Warwick on an online professional development
learning platform to transform the teaching of Shakespeare. Launching next month, the
ìrehearsal roomî teaching resources will give teachers all over the world access to
the insights and working practices of internationally-renowned actors, artists and directors, as well as
specialist academics and teachers. The programme will even offer the chance to study for a
Post Graduate qualification in the Teaching of Shakespeare.
And in America, the Knowledge is Power Programme, one of the most successful and widely-studied
charter school chains, is already using cheap digital technology to share lessons from its
most proficient teachers to every teacher in that chain. And even the best teachers
can hone their skills by watching their peers in action. So, the easy availability of high
quality material can augment teaching and learning.
But just as technology raises profound questions about how we learn, the second point I want
to make is it also prompts us to think about how we teach.
Games and interactive software can help pupils acquire complicated skills and rigorous knowledge
in an engaging and an enjoyable way. Adaptive software has the ability to recognise and
respond to different abilities, personalising teaching for every pupil, whatever their level
of ability. With the expert help of a teacher, students can progress at different rates through
lessons calibrated to stretch them just the right amount.
Now I know there are some who will raise their eyebrows at the prospect of games influencing
modern education practice. But we should be proud of the contribution that games can make.
Britain has an incredibly strong games industry, with vast potential to engage with education
both in this country and all over the world. And Weíve already seen these technologies
being used in imaginative ways. Games developed by Marcus Du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics
at Oxford, are introducing children to advanced, complicated maths problems ñ often at a much
earlier age than people would have imagined those children could grapple with those mathemtical
concepts - and those games are producing great results.
Before Christmas I visited Kingsford School in Newham, where the Department for Education
is working with the Li Ka Shing Foundation and the highly respected Stanford Research
Institute. The pilot scheme operating there uses computer programmes to teach maths interactively
ñ for example, showing a race between two people on screen and allows pupils to plot
their time and distance on a graph, then adjust it for variables.
Now, this pilot hasnít been dictated by central government or any minister, but Stanford already
says it is one of the most successful educational projects they've seen and I am looking forward
in due course to seeing the results of the pilot.
So, it's not only the case that technology can augment teaching and learning, and also
introduces us to new pedagogies and new ways of learning which can engage students who
may not have been engaged before. Technology also, and this is my third point, brings unprecedented
opportunities for more sensitive assessment of students' abilities. Teachers can now support
pupilsí learning by assessing their progress through technology in a much more sophisticated
way, and that assessment can be shared in real time with pupils and parents.
Each pupilís strengths and weaknesses can be closely monitored. And one of the advantages
of using technology is that pupils who are struggling can be stigmatised sometimes, and
those who are streaking ahead, can avoid being embarrassed. Teachers can adjust lesson plans
to target areas where pupils are weakest, and identify gaps in knowledge quickly and
reliably through the medium of technology.
Sophisticated assessment like this is already being used in schools now. Brailes Primary
School, for example, a small rural school on the border of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire,
uses online tools enabling teachers to use pre-assembled tests, or design their own.
One of the teachers, Deborah Smith, has praised the system, saying, ìit has enabled me to
differentiate my teaching to meet the needs of different groups. The assessments are quick
and simple to prepareÖ leaving more time for planning and teaching.î
In Chichester School for Boys, electronic voting pads provide students with instant
feedback during class. Teachers get real-time feedback on how well
their material is being understood ñ even on a question by question basis.
These are just three ways - augmenting teaching, new styles of learning, better assessment
- in which technology is profoundly changing education today ñ and I am sure from what's
on display in the hall today that there will be many more.
While things are changing so rapidly, while the technology is unpredictable and the future
is unknowable, Government can highlight and encourage these trends, we must resist the
temptation to wade in from the centre just because there is a new and exciting initiative
to prescribe to schools exactly what they should be doing and how they should be doing
it.
We have to work with the grain of these developments as they arise: supporting, facilitating and
encouraging change, rather than dictating or constricting it.
By its very nature, new technology is a disruptive force. It innovates, it invents, it flattens
hierarchies, and it encourages creativity and fresh thinking. I could say the same of
our whole school reform programme. In fact, Iím fairly sure I have said the same on many
occasions.
Just as weíve devolved greater autonomy to schools, and put our trust in the professionalism
of teachers; just as weíve sought to lift the burden of central prescription, and given
heads and schools power over their own destiny; just as the internet has made information
more democratic, and given every single user the chance to talk to the world; so technology
will bring more autonomy to each of us in this room, whether we're in business, the
business of education or parents.
It's a huge opportunity. But itís also a responsibility.
Thatís why, when it comes to government spending its money centrally, we don't want to focus
too much on hardware or procurement. Instead, we want to concentrate on investing in training
individuals. We need to improve the training of teachers so they have the skills and knowledge
that they need to make the most of the opportunities ahead.
It is vital that teachers can feel confident using technological tools and resources for
their own and their pupilsí benefit, within and beyond the classroom. It's vital that
they can adapt to new technologies as they emerge. It's important that they can keep
up with children who are digital natives whom they are now entrusted to teach. So that means
we have to ensure that teachers receive the best possible ITT and CPD throughout their
time in the classroom in the use of educational technology.
So we'll be working with the TDA, and its new incarnation, the Teaching Agency, to look
at initial teacher training courses carefully in the coming year so that teachers get the
skills and experience they need to use technology confidently. And weíre also working with
Nesta who, supported by Nominet Trust and others, are today announcing a £2m programme
to fund and research innovative technology projects in schools.
One of the ways we can support teachers is encouraging them to learn from other schools
who are already doing this particularly well.
We know that some ICT teaching in schools is already excellent - as reported in the
most recent Ofsted report on ICT education - sharing that excellence will help all schools
to drive up standards. We are already working with the Open University on Vital, a programme
which encourages teachers to share ICT expertise between schools. High-performing academy chains
will also play a huge role in spreading their superb practice and innovation between schools.
And the new teaching schools we've created across the country are already forming networks
to help other schools develop and improve their use of technology. So the Department
for Education is going to provide dedicated funding to these Teaching Schools to ensure
that their expertise aids the process of continuing professional development in this vitally important
area.
But even as we want to spread the existing best practice, we have to acknowledge that
the disruptive, innovative, creative force of new technology also forces us to think
about the curriculum.
To my mind, this one area exemplifies, more than any other, the perils of the centre seeking
to capture in leaden bureaucratic prose the restless spirit of technological innovation.
To be blunt, we have a problem with the current ICT curriculum.
We know that the best degrees in computer science are among the most rigorous and respected
qualifications in the world. Theyíre based on one of the most formidable intellectual
fields ñ logic and set theory ñ and they prepare students for immensely rewarding careers
and world-changing innovations.
But youíd never know about the promise and challenge of the best computer courses from
the current ICT curriculum.
Schools, teachers and industry leaders have all told us that the current curriculum is
too off-putting, too demotivating, too dull.
Submissions to the National Curriculum Review Call for Evidence from learned societies and
from campaign groups have all called the current National Curriculum for ICT unsatisfactory
at best.
These organisations are worried that it doesnít stretch pupils enough or allow enough opportunities
for innovation and experimentation ñ they all say that the curriculum has to change
radically.
Some respondents in a 2009 research study by e-Skills actually said that ICT GCSE was
ìso harmful, boring and/or irrelevant it should simply be scrappedî. The Royal Society
is so concerned that it has spent two years researching the problem with universities,
employers, teachers and professional bodies. It's due to publish a report this Friday which
I'm looking forward to reading. And because ICT has been so unpopular, there are now grave
doubts about existing Computer Science courese for 16- to 18-year-olds.
Just at a time when technology is bursting with potential, teachers, professionals, employers,
universities, parents and pupils are all telling us the same thing. The ICT curriculum in schools
is a mess.
Thatís why I am announcing today that the Department for Education is opening a consultation
on withdrawing the existing National Curriculum Programme of Study for ICT from September
of this year.
Now, the traditional approach would have been to keep the Programme of Study in place for
the next four years while we assembled a panel of handpickedexperts, wrote a new ICT curriculum,
spent a fortune on new teacher training, just for that curriculum and engaged with exam
boards for new ICT GCSES only to find that all that work would become obsolete almost
immediately.
We won't be doing that.
Technology in schools will no longer be micromanaged by Whitehall. By withdrawing the Programme
of Study which is centrally prescribed and imposed, weíre now giving schools and teachers
freedom over what and how to teach; we hope it will revolutionise ICT as we know it.
Now it's important for me to stress that the study of ICT will remain compulsory at all
key stages, and will still be taught at every stage of the curriculum. And for those who
want it, the existing Programme of Study will remain on the web for reference.
But no English school will be forced to follow it any more. From this September, all schools
will be free to use the amazing resources that already exist and
are now being generated on the web.
Universities, businesses and others will have the opportunity to devise new courses and
new, more rigorous and attractive exams. And in particular, we want to see universities
and businesses create new high quality Computer Science GCSEs, and develop curricula which
encourage schools to make use of the brilliant Computer Science content which is already
available online.
I am pleased that OCR is pioneering work in this field, and I'm delighted that IBM and
others are already working on a pilot. Facebook has teamed up with UK-based organisation Apps
for Good to offer young people the chance to learn how to design, code and build social
applications for use on social networks, via a unique new training course which they aim
to make freely available online this year to potential users all over the world.
And there are other specialist groups have published or are about to publish detailed
ICT curricula and programmes of study, including Computing At School (led by the British Computer
Society and the Institute of IT), Behind the Screens (led by eSkills UK), and others - all
of these programmes have enjoyed considerable support from industry leaders.
Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years, once we remove
the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum. Instead of children bored out of their minds
being taught how to use Word and Excel by teachers who are even more bored, we could
have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called
Scratch. By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously covered only in
University courses and be writing their own Apps for their smartphones.
This is not an airy promise from an MP ñ this is the prediction of experts like Ian
Livingstone who have already built world-class companies from computer science.
The new Computer Science courses will reflect what you all know: that the subject is rigorous,
fascinating and intellectually challenging.
After all, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the most innovative and successful
proponents of Computer Science today. But his computer science expertise is just one
arrow in his intellectual quiver ñ he is also an expert in maths, Science, French,
Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek.
And it's important that we see Computer Science taking its place alongside those subjects
as a universally respected and rigorous academic discipline. Computer Science requires a thorough
grounding in logic and set theory, and it's merging already with other scientific fields
into new hybrid research subjects at the cutting edge of science like computational biology.
So that's why I'm saying today that if a new Computer Science GCSE can be developed that
meets the high standards of intellectual depth and practical value that we know the subject
can reach, we will certainly consider including Computer Science as an option in our English
Baccalaureate of academically rigorous subjects.
Although individual technologies can change day by day, they are underpinned by foundational
concepts and principles that have endured for decades. Long after todayís pupils leave
school and enter the workplace ñ long after the technologies they used at school are obsolete
ñ the principles if they're sufficiently rigorously embedded in the curriculum they
will have learnt in Computer Science will still hold true.
Now of course advances in technology should also make us think not just about the ICT
curriculum but about the broader school curriculum in a new way.
In an open-source world, why should we accept that the curriculum will always be one single,
static document? A statement of priorities frozen in time; a blunt instrument which lands
with a thump on teachersí desks and updated only centrally and only infrequently?
Because we know that in ICT, for example, schools are already leading the way when it
comes to using educational technology in new and exciting ways ñ and they do it in spite
of what the curriculum prescribes, not because of it.
The broader requirements of the National Curriculum, while they do need to be specified in law,
they can be used creatively to help us develop the content of what is actually taught. So
beyond a new, slimmed down National Curriculum concentrating on the essentials, we need to
consider how we can take a wiki, collaborative approach to developing new curriculum materials
across the board; using technological platforms to their full advantage in creating something
richer and more sophisticated than anything that's previously been available to schools.
My proposal to disapply the ICT programme of study is about embracing the potential
of that freedom. It will mean that, for the first time, teachers will be allowed to cover
truly innovative, specialist and challenging topics.
And whether they choose someone else's curriculum, or whether they design their own programme
of study specifically for their school, they will have the freedom and flexibility to decide
what is best for their own pupils with their own abilities and their own background.
Teachers will now be allowed to focus more sharply on the subjects that they think matter
ñ for example, teaching exactly how computers work, they could study the basics of programming
and coding and they can ensure that pupils have a go themselves.
Initiatives like the Raspberry Pi scheme which the Guardian highlighted yesterday will give
children the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of programming with their own credit card
sized, single-board computers. With minimal memory and no disk drives, the Raspberry Pi
computer can operate basic programming languages, handle tasks like spread sheets, word-processing
and games, and connect to wifi via a dongle ñ and it costs between £16 and £22. This
is a great example of the leading edge of education technology happening right here
in the UK. It could bring the same excitement to computing as the BBC Micro did in the 1980s,
and I know that itís already being carefully watched by education and technology experts
all over the world.
So now as well as choosing what to study, schools can also choose how.
Technology can be integrated and embedded across the whole curriculum. In geography,
for example, pupils could access the specialised software and tools used by professional geographers,
allowing them to tackle more challenging and interesting work. Molecular modelling software
could bring huge advantages for science students.
And the Abbey School in Reading has already been piloting 3D technologies for teaching
Biology, showing 3D images of the heart pumping blood through valves, and then allowing students
to manipule, rotate and tilt the heart in real time. As the Abbey School Biology teacher
Ros Johnson said, the 3D technology ìhas made me realise what the students werenít
understanding...what I canít believe is how much difference it has made to the girlsí
understandingî.
Ultimately, the use of technology in schools is a subject that will keep growing and changing,
just as technology keeps growing and changing.
But we can be confident about one thing. The demand in our economy and the world economy
for high-level skills will only grow in the years ahead. In work, academia and their personal
lives, young people will increasingly depend upon a higher level of technological literacy
and a greater depth of scientific knowledge.
And it won't just affect our country. Every nation in the world will be changed more than
we can imagine by the growth of technology and we in Britain must ensure that we can
make the most of our heritage and our existing assets to become, to remain and to lead the
world as leaders in education technology.
Today has seen the conclusion of the Education World Forum here in London. One of the things
I want to emphasise is how excited I am that the collaboration that the BETT conference
embodies and that the Education World Forum incarnates, because I cannot emphasise enough
how important it is for me to ensure that all of us learn from each other and that in
particular we all seek to emulate what is happening in the highest performing education
systems. I am delighted that so many of them are here today ñ and it's my intention to
ensure that we in this country can learn from them.
And one of the areas I believe we can learn from them is the culture of aspiration which
is embedded in the highest-acheiving education nations. And that culture of aspiration is
about setting directions. Today Iíve set out our direction of travel
in technology, and taked a few steps on the path to ensuring that our children learn more
from the innovation for which you are responsible. But there is more to come, and we will have
more to say over the course of this year.
And we need your help to ensure that as we take further steps down that road we continue
to travel in the right direction. Which is why I'd like to welcome the online discussion
launched today at schoolstech.org because we need a serious, collaborative conversation
about how we can use technology better to transform education ñ and I look forward
to finding out what everyone has to say.
Events like this are crucial in showcasing the best of what technology can bring, showing
what can be done, reminding us what is already being achieved. We will depend upon your insight
and your ideas, your expertise and experience, as you take these technologies into schools
and try them with your students.
So thank you again for everything you've done, everything you will do, for inviting me to
BETT today, and I wish you all good exploring today.