Digital Inclusion Conference 2009: Education Workstream
5th May 2009
Michael and Simon with Stephen Dodson, Director of DC10plus.
At last week’s National Digital Inclusion Conference Simon Whitehouse (Digital Birmingham), Michael Lewis (Service Birmingham) and I were some of those representing Birmingham.
We wanted to take in as much of the conference as we could between us; so I represented us at the education workstream, hosted by UK Online Centres.
The education workstream kicked off with a panel discussion and questions. Donald Clark, Dougald Hine (co-founder of The School of Everything), Richard Bolsin (Chief Executive of the Workers’ Education Association), Nathalie McDermot (OnRoad Media) and Liz Dawson (Department of Innovation, Universities and Schools) were largely in agreement on most issues, including the educational establishment’s resistance to change.
There was some dischord on the solution: most of the audience balked at Donald Clark’s suggestion that provision of IT in schools be delivered centrally. I felt Donald’s suggestion didn’t quite warrant the red mist that seemed to accumulate in the room – his specific proposal somehow seemed to polarise the debate between those in favour of a centralised, top-down solution and advocates of a more bottom-up approach (there being far more of the latter in the room).
Eventually, the group settled on a differentiated approach: in some cases, large-scale infrastructure is the solution, and in other cases you can’t get around the need for grass-roots work.
Dougald Hine made an important point about digital technology’s potential both to create and diminish social capital: where activities are simply shifted online and replace face-to-face contact, they can diminish social capital; but there is a huge potential for digital technology to complement and enhance conventional activities by making organisation and communication easier. (I was talking to Simon only today about the exhibition of photographs of Barack Obama’s administration that is being displayed at Birmingham Museum and which I read about on Pete Ashton’s blog. I must go an see that …)
These issues were not confined to this workstream session: indeed, issues of scalability and the importance of personal contact were raised in the plenary session summarising the outcomes of all workshops at the end of the conference.
This blog is really useful towards the insight of digital technology.
It would be really good to get some pupils opinion of what they think of the new techonlogy that should be introduced to the schools.
Hi Reshma, sorry about the delay in replying to you. Thank you for your comment. If you would like to email us about how you think we can engage with more pupils (a few of my colleagues already work with a range of schools across the city, but any tips would be very welcome) please email us at digital@birmingham.gov.uk.
Hi Claire,
I just came across this write-up – thank you for reporting on our panel! Just for clarity, it was me who co-founded School of Everything, not Donald Clark. The comments about social capital which you attribute to “Richard Hine” were also mine – glad you appreciated them!
Dougald Hine
Hi Dougald, my colleague John actually attended ndi09 and reported back through this blog on the education workstream – many thanks for clarifying the detail, I will make the appropriate changes.