Inside Education 419, Deirdre Hodson on Technology and Sustainability (22-6-21)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney

On this week's podcast I speak to Deirdre Hodson who works in the European Commission’s department for Education, Youth, Sports and Culture in Brussels. She provides a European Union policy perspective on technology and sustainability in education. Among the topics we discuss are:

• How she came to work in the area of digital education policy and her studies in the area
• Ben Williamson
• Neil Selwyn
• How her studies contributed to her work as a policymaker
• How the pandemic is likely to impact on policy and practice
• The need for schools to have digital strategies
• The importance of the school as a whole being the unit of change and of hearing the student voice
• The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning
• How countries reaped the benefits of investment in digital resources in education during the pandemic
• Asking what we can learn from remote teaching and learning as a result of the pandemic
• Broadening the education infrastructure to include collaboration with libraries and museums
• The origin, purpose and launch of the SELFIE diagnostic/planning tool she was involved in developing
• How SELFIE has been used and a new SELFIE tool for teachers to be launched in October 2021.
• Report on Artificial Intelligence in Education
• Examples of interesting practices in digital education across Europe
• An account of a visit to a school in Finland and the phenomenon-based learning and to one in Austria
• Sustainability, digital technologies, accessibility and inclusion
• Risks and threats of technology alongside opportunities (e.g. data protection; student and teacher agency)
• Differences between aspects of a teacher’s job that are routine (e.g. marking) and those that are human (e.g. coaching and mentoring)
• Neil Selwyn Should robots replace teachers?
• Challenges of not being able to hold the regular Leaving Certificate examinations in 2020.
• The value of learning languages
• Erasmus and E-Twinning: Léargas
• Neil Selwyn’s book Distrusting Educational Technology: Critical Questions for Changing Times