Education has been surviving for too long on the leftovers of technology designed for elsewhere, says Richard Noss. It’s time for change.

Technology has transformed almost every area of working and social life in ways almost unimaginable a few short decades ago. But there is one crucial area that lags behind: education.

Undoubtedly there have been small steps – interactive whiteboards have replaced chalk in many classrooms, for example – but the massive ambitions we share, as a nation, for education cannot be met without technology: technology designed specifically to help people learn. For too long education has had to make do with the crumbs of other people’s technology, designed for other purposes. Education is too important and too complex for that to continue.

Students walk into school every day with powerful technology in their pockets, but it’s labelled a distraction to be left at the door. At home, students are networking online, uploading videos, playing online games with people across the globe, shopping, editing photos, building websites. Meanwhile, too many schools are struggling with cumbersome networks, outdated computers and inadequate time and training to exploit technology to its potential.

The potential for learning through technology is clear. Some schools are pioneering its use and new qualifications reflecting our digital society are being developed. But this is barely the tip of the iceberg. Much more lies beneath the surface, along with opportunities to exploit technology to bring new meaning to teaching and learning, and make both a more rewarding experience.

We’re reluctant to change education, what is taught and what is learned. 99 years ago Thomas Edison, the inventor of the motion picture, reportedly declared: ‘Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools…It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed inside of ten years.’ The fact that almost a century on, teaching and learning are broadly the same as in the 1900s perhaps illustrates education’s resistance to change.

But this is where change is most desperately needed if our young people are to become active, useful citizens of the 21st century. They need to comprehend the new things just as much as reading, writing and arithmetic, and we need to find new ways to teach and assess them.

In January 2012, the Royal Society published a report into computing in schools. In it, the authors wrote: ‘We want our children to understand and play an active role in the digital world that surrounds them, not to be passive consumers of opaque and mysterious technology’. If this aim is to be realised, education at all levels needs purpose-built technology that gives students the best possible tools to learn and, crucially, to understand. Without it, our schools will languish, locked in an analogue mind-set while the rest of society goes digital. Our economy, our children – indeed all of us – will be the losers.

Richard Noss is Professor of Mathematics Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, and co-director of the London Knowledge Lab where he is Director of the Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme. Professor Noss is joint author of a June 2012 report on technology-enhanced learning entitled ‘System upgrade: Realising the vision for UK education’