As Spring bends into Summer, I too am gearing up for a new cycle at work – I’m on the home stretch of the Becta job which has been fascinating, exhilarating and very informative. Becta’s new strap line is ‘Leading Next Generation Learning’. Judging by some of the well informed… and well connected guests at the recent series of seminars they’ve just hosted, they are right to pitch themselves at the heart of the education agenda. Is there a school in the UK that doesn’t now understand the essential need for ICT in support of learning, teaching and management? It’s embedded at the very heart of things now, whether it’s used for texting parents to tell them their kids are bunking off, or being used by five year old roaming reporters practicing their speaking and listening skills. There isn’t an area of school life where technology isn’t breaking new ground and making more and more things possible – I love it! But then I always have. I was a keen Desktop Publisher in the mid-eighties and so creating audio visual documents or ‘TV’ is just a more interesting and more dynamic step on from there – training people to understand that ‘do it yourself’ TV has the same impact as DIY magazine publishing is not easy mind – but that’s another story.

I think one of the key things I’ve learnt over the last few weeks working with Becta is how many opportunities there are for ICT to improve people’s lives, whether its reducing the effects of rural isolation or creating more engaging learning journeys for otherwise hard to reach students. It can also really add value to the teacher-pupil relationship, as well as reducing the reliance on the chemistry that often underpins them. I know if I’d had had access to a world of online resources, I’d have stayed engaged far longer than I ever did in the dusty and musty classrooms we were taught in.

BECTA’s fifth seminar on the findings of their latest research supporting the Harnessing Technology strategy (www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy), was on the potential use of e-learning for NEETs (young people Not in Education Employment or Training). The research team from Lancaster University has undertaken a difficult job extremely well, and they’ve come up with some sensible observations and recommendations. However, their task hasn’t been helped by the Government’s buy-in to the concept of NEETs as a distinctive category… in the first place. Under the current definition of NEET, the drug addict, the ‘gap year’ kid, the young mum, and the mentally ill, are indistinguishable.

The question that I’m most interested in is: ‘how can technology more effectively be used to help disaffected young to learn, whether in school or out?’ Whilst Lancaster’s research begins to address this central question, the terms of the Government’s NEET policy unnecessarily complicates it.

Joanna and her team have filmed case studies for each of the BECTA seminars, and the seminars have also been filmed, for wider dissemination of the research findings.

Watch this space.