Cambridge Education Guide - Autumn/Winter 2020 WEB

44

TECHNOLOGY

Schools’ Technological Quantum Leap

H OW S C H O O L S A R E H A R N E S S I N G T E C H N O L O G Y T O B R I N G T H E C L A S S R O OM I N T O T H E H OM E A N D B E Y O N D

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f you had to think of three words to describe schools’ capacity for change, ‘fast’ and ‘surprising’ probably wouldn’t be among them. But prepare to give those preconceptions a makeover, because one thing that’s emerged from these extraordinary times is that

schools can be all those things and more. When schools shut in March, teachers had to do things differently. They had to innovate and evolve, do it quickly and achieve all this while working from home. And they delivered. Almost overnight, they came up with new ways of delivering lessons, taking classes and keeping the pastoral side going, too. All this when on top of supporting their pupils and their parents, many teachers were having to juggle their own family responsibilities, including childcare. Teachers’ wholesale adoption of technology in our schools has been extremely impressive. One head teacher estimates that IT understanding and usage moved on three or four years in just a few weeks, which turbo-boosted the integration of technology into teaching. It wasn’t that the technology wasn’t already around – it was. Many schools

AUTUMN/WINTER 2020

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