Jamie Fries 
What is the role of technology in education? In interviews at the Bett education technology show, recorded in 2015, eleven people from education companies were asked that question. Their answers fell into a handful of themes: connection, reach, ease of use and what technology can add beyond content.
One thing is worth saying plainly at the start. Every speaker worked for an education company at the time, so their answers are the industry’s own case for technology. That makes them useful in a particular way: they show what a product is meant to do, which is exactly what a district should then test.
Connecting students beyond the classroom walls
Several speakers began with connection. Paul Humphrey, Publisher, Fiction Express, said technology “creates a worldwide community through blogging or through forums,” so that “children around the world can actually talk to each other about their reading and about how excited they are by what they’re doing.”
Shane Davis, Founding Director, Literacy Planet, described technology as something that “allows children all around the world to experience learning in ways that may extend their knowledge and their abilities way beyond that of the classroom.” It gives students a chance to take “the skills and concepts that their teachers are giving them” and apply them “in ways that ultimately are empowering for them.”
Richard Flower, Director of International Sales, Kurzweil Education, made the same point from his own childhood. Technology, he said, “makes the world a much smaller place and it opens their eyes to much more things than I ever saw at school.” He never got to see Mount Everest live or talk with children in Ghana, “so it’s crucial.”
Reach and access for more students
For Jamie Fries, CEO ReadingWise, the main benefit is scale. “Technology allows more people to get the benefits of decent education,” he said, with literacy as “the foundations of a wider education.” Without technology, “it’s much, much harder to reach numbers that we need to.”
Tilly Brooke, Head of Learning and Engagement, NowPressPlay, pointed to engagement and access together. “The role of technology in education today is obviously huge,” she said, and “with children getting better at it than their parents, it’s really important that they are engaged and excited about learning.” Her company, she said, uses its technology “to make the curriculum accessible for all children.”
Jaroslav Vesely, Owner and Managing Director, ProjektMedia, argued that the starting age matters too: using modern technologies with children as young as three and four, he said, helps them do much better as they grow older.
Confidence and ease of use
Two speakers focused on the adults. Beth Abbott, General Manager, AI Media, noted that schools “not just in the UK but around the world” are in different places in their journey with technology, and “a lot of schools don’t feel very confident.” She pointed to spaces at the show such as Bett Futures, where schools could “just have a chat and get going.”
Lars Nielsen, Export Manager, MV Nordic, put the design goal in one sentence: “Technology will be helping you, not an obstacle, and that’s what the development should aim at.” The aim, he said, is technology “so easy to use that no one, not even teachers who may not have worked very much with technology, will give it a second thought.”
More than content
Marta Palomares, International Learning Consultant, Edebe, drew a line between information and teaching. Technology “should enhance that place which we call school,” she said, and give children “maybe not just contents which can be found wherever but maybe methodology,” helping them “to become creative and find their own talent.”
Simon Gauvin, CEO, Agora Mobile/Vizwik, described the same idea in terms of what technology makes possible: “Technology is an enabler, it helps students access resources and it enables learning to be more effective. We can measure things more effectively and we can represent things that are complex more simply.”
Chris Hamblin, Sales Director, Schoop LTD, carried the argument from school to home. Bringing technology into the school community, and using it at home “in terms of an extra resource,” is “vitally important because technology is the way forward,” he said, since children use it not only in the classroom but at home “as an education tool.”
Technology in education: how the question looks for school leaders now
Since these interviews, devices and learning platforms have become a routine part of school, and artificial intelligence has added a new set of decisions. edCircuit’s guide to educational technology in schools sets out what the research shows about technology and learning, and what leaders need to know about funding, privacy and security.
The speakers’ themes still work as a checklist for any new tool. Does it widen access for students who would otherwise be left out, as Fries and Brooke described? Will teachers find it easy enough to use without a second thought, the standard Nielsen set? Does it improve how students learn, not only what they can look up, as Palomares and Gauvin argued? And does it connect school and home in a way families can manage?
What the speakers did not discuss matters as much. None addressed evidence that a product raises achievement, the protection of student data, total cost, or how much screen time is right for young children. Those were outside a short answer at a trade show, but they are now central to any adoption decision, and teachers’ judgement belongs in it from the start, as edCircuit has reported in Teacher Input in Edtech Adoption Drives Success.
Taken together, the eleven answers describe technology as a means rather than an end: a way to reach more students, connect them more widely and help teachers teach. Whether a particular tool lives up to that is the question each district still has to answer for itself.
For one more 2015 view on the state of education technology, see edCircuit’s The Current State of Edtech: Veejay Lingiah of Flashsticks.
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