News Story

Keynote at Future Classrooms 2013, Northern Ireland

KMi Reporter, Monday 25 Mar 2013

Future Classrooms 2013 was held in Belfast ‘Titanic Centre’ on March 1st 2013. Professor Peter Scott from KMi gave a keynote talk on "What advice has tertiary education to offer to us teachers?" presenting some of the experience of new technologies in mobile and ubiquitous learning from the OU perspective.

The conference was Northern Ireland’s first major event designed to help education leaders and key decision makers develop strategies for the creative use of technology in the classroom. Changes in how young people learn today will help to prepare our future workforce for a modern competitive economy of tomorrow. This year’s focus was on the importance of creative approaches across the curriculum and advice on how mobile technology can be deployed to support this.

The event was a joint enterprise of a range of NI organisations including the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure; the AMMA and NERVE centres; Studion-ON; and Northern Ireland Screen. The conference was opened by Stephen McGowan (Head of Creativity @ DCAL, NI launches Creativity Month and the Creative Classrooms at #fc2013ni pic.twitter.com/Ddv6hqsqcv Other speakers on the day included: Bro McFerrin, from Allstate – one of NI’s biggest employers of programmers and developers, and Jonathan Chesney from the Worldesk company, representing innovation in Northern Ireland.

One significant feature of the conference was the launch of a set of excellent support resources for NI schools, including a ‘Creative Classrooms Teachers pack’ and a new ‘Introducing Mobile Technology handbook’. "It is clear that NI is leading the way for the rest of the UK to follow" said Professor Scott. "A very exciting place to be".