Will the new media technologies increasingly to be deployed in schools really change how children learn? In promising a more personalised approach to learning, they offer a vision of each child reaching their full potential, through being actively involved in choosing their own learning paths and styles. While the national curriculum may remain in place as an overall set of objectives, schools will cease to offer a ‘one size fits all’ system of education. Teachers will do less teaching in the traditional sense, but will become guides helping children along their chosen learning paths, facilitated and mediated through ‘virtual learning environments’.

Not everyone accepts the idea that children are best taught in this way and some fear that this new direction may fragment education and undermine its capacity to give children a broad view of the world and a clear sense of their future within it. What is the best way of thinking about the innovatory potential of new technologies in education? How can we make the most of what they can offer while keeping the best of what a teacher-led, subject-based curriculum has provided in the past?

The seminar will be followed by a wine reception. Visit the Institute of Ideas website for further event details and tickets.