Digital Live: Evolving Education

As a teacher of English, Moktar set out to explore whether technology could be used to transform the ways teachers mark and moderate essays. This journey led Moktar to founding Progressay, an innovative A,i driven augmented marking platform that has since gone from strength to strength; to date, Progressay has delivered a number of successful trials including with Pearson and Warwick University. Moktar is also an immigration lawyer, a filmmaker, and a community leader.

Mark Bashforth has over 14 years' experience of working in an FE college, starting out as a Lecturer in Computing while working in an OFSTED Grade 1 department, teaching a range of IT/ Computing subjects, and leading several courses. Mark has also taken an active lead in other extracurricular activities including setting up and teaching code club sessions and children’s university sessions. Mark was then promoted in 2017 to Curriculum Development Manager for Digital Industries within the FE College.

Mark joined Pearson in 2019 as Curriculum Development Manager for the North of England.

Mark has experienced other successes during his career, including becoming an ‘Advanced ICT Toolkit Author’ for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) The role included:

• the preparation and delivery of Toolkit 9 (Creating educational games using Adventurer Maker Software)
• the preparation and delivery of a one-day Web 2.0 conference. During the four-hour session delegates investigated podcasts, G-casts, wikis, blogs, social networking sites and a plethora of subject-related web 2.0 sites

Mark has also attended several awards ceremonies at Citigroup's London headquarters and received several awards from the SSAT for the development of teaching resources.

Matt works as a team leader for the Blended Learning Consortium and an Advance Quality Practitioner for Digital Skills at the Heart of Worcestershire College. He supports staff and students at the college but also externally under the EdTech Demonstrator Programme.

Shamim-Ara Begum is a Learning Technologies Coach at Birmingham Metropolitan College.

She is passionate about the use of digital technology to enhance teaching and learning and has many years' experience teaching adults.

Shamim-Ara always combines the two, which means there is never a dull moment in her lessons!

Isla is Head of Humanities at Pearson, responsible for overseeing the development and support for Pearson qualifications, curriculum, and teaching and learning resources. Isla has also recently been Intervention Transformation Lead for the UK Schools business, driving forward Pearson's focus on supporting learners and schools through these uncertain times, with a particular focus on recovery and new initiatives for intervention. With over 12 years' experience at Pearson, Isla's other roles have included Head of Primary and Head of Assessment.

Tim Brady has a wide range of experience, from industry to computing. He worked as a memory chip designer in the semiconductor industry for 20 years, and then turned his hand to a decade of teaching ICT and Computer Science in a large comprehensive.

More recently, Tim has been using his expertise to support teachers delivering Pearson Edexcel Computer Science and IT qualifications.

Stefanie Campbell has been an inspirational peer mentor, conference trainer, and eLearning practitioner for many years, sharing her expertise and practice with a range of colleagues both nationally and internationally.

Lucy Chowns has worked in educational publishing for 14 years, specialising in digital assessment for the last six years.

She currently leads on Pearson’s strategy for classroom assessment services in UK Schools.

Romane Courdacher is the Sculpture Town Artist in Residence in Harlow.

She is a UK-based multidisciplinary artist, who combines sculpture, physical installations, and virtual spaces.

She graduated in 2018 from Ecole Duperré (Paris) with a BA in Textiles and Materials.

Jenny Dunne is the Executive Director of Learning at the New Bridge MAT. She has 20 years’ experience of working with children and young people in both mainstream primary schools and Special Educational Needs schools.

Jenny currently leads on the development of curriculum and assessment systems within the MAT to ensure the whole curriculum is purposeful for each individual learner and that we can capture the progress that they make, not only in academic areas but also holistic areas of their development.

Alongside this, Jenny leads on the 1:1 iPad strategy across the MAT and is passionate about technology complementing and enhancing teaching and learning both academically and in developing purposeful life skills.

Jenny is passionate about ensuring all children and young people access a broad, balanced yet personalised curriculum offer. She believes that there should be no barriers to learning that can not be broken down to ensure each learner reaches their potential destination to play a meaningful part in the community in which they live.

My name is Setayesh Elahi. I am currently study A level Engineering, Maths and Chemistry at East Barnet School sixth form. I have been a part of my school's robotics department for five years where I have competed in the VEX EDR championships with my team, Girls of Steel.

Donna Ford-Clarke is Product Director for BTECs and Apprenticeships at Pearson.

In this role, Donna leads on identifying, developing and launching new qualifications, digital learning solutions and teaching and learning support services for the BTEC portfolio.

Ritam started his career in the Systems Integration and Technology practice at Accenture, working on a number of large-scale technology transformation programmes at Tier 1 Investment Banks. He subsequently worked as a consultant at Capco and Bank of America Merrill Lynch before, in 2014, going on to found Studio Graphene - a firm that specialises in developing blank canvas technology products for startups as well as larger corporates. Over the last few years, Studio Graphene has worked on designing and building a number of digital platforms, including within the EdTech space.

Senior Strategy Manager

Pearson

Rebecca works for Pearson developing their digital strategy for products and services to support UK Schools. She works alongside Lucy Chowns and others to build ActiveHub, Pearson’s next generation of digital service for UK schools that harnesses insights, resources and assessments. In her role at Pearson Rebecca has partnered with Century Tech to bring out Maths Flex, a BETT 2021 finalist, and A new maths practice service for KS2 that combines mastery approaches to intelligent practice, whole-class teaching, and same day intervention with powerful AI. Rebecca has also previously worked on adaptive learning product, SuccessMaker and has almost 10 years working in new product development for Pearson. Rebecca recently gained an MSc in Psychology from Oxford Brookes University, with a focus on parental engagement in school-based maths.

Les Hopper has over 15 years’ experience working with educators, technologists and academics to produce market-leading learning solutions.

He is passionate about the power of education to change lives, and the potential that technology offers to support a high-quality education.

Les currently works as Director of Digital and Assessment for Pearson UK Schools.

James Jackson, soon to be Director of Digital Transformation at the Shaw Academy Trust. Previously he was Head of Systems and Planning at Bishop Grosseteste University. He has been teaching for 16 years, previously a Curriculum Manager for Computing and Games, and has been a trainer for Pearson for 9 years. He loves being able to give back to teachers and give them interesting ways to use technology to deliver their lessons.

Matt Jones is Technology for Learning Lead at Blackpool Sixth and tutor of Drama, Performing Arts and Media. 

He has experience in coordinating BYOD schemes and 'paperless' teaching, and great enthusiasm for quality digital resources and new forms of learning and assessment.

Priya Lakhani OBE is the Founder CEO of CENTURY Tech, the award-winning artificial intelligence education technology company. CENTURY is the global leader in AI-powered learning tools for schools and families, working in dozens of countries across the world.

Having had 20 years teaching experience in a range of schools from PRUs, progressive state schools, independent boarding schools, performance sports academies. Over my time I have run two academic departments and also been heavily involved in the pastoral side of education.

I now work part time in a school and also have a role as Educational Researcher. Concurrent to this I am a UCL Teaching Fellow on the BA Education, and Module Lead on both Learning and Assessment and Academic Performance at UWL.

Sanooba Muneer is an Engineering Lecturer, and has worked at Basingstoke College of Technology for the past five years.

She is a certified Google Educator and Adobe Creative Educator, and has worked in Higher and Further education for 11 years.

Sanooba has also designed an online Soldering Course for an Electronics Company.

Lindsay Nadin is Director of Primary Learning Services and Direct to Learner, within Pearson’s UK Schools business.

Lindsay has 18 years’ experience developing educational solutions for Primary and Secondary learners, their teachers and their parents.

With her specialism in Primary reading, Lindsay was instrumental in developing Pearson’s ground-breaking online reading programme, Bug Club, and also led the team behind the DfE-accredited maths programme, Power Maths.

To support Pearson’s mission of helping people make progress in their lives through learning, Lindsay and her team are committed to leveraging the power of technology and innovation to enhance education.

Profile to follow...

Rob is Blutick’s CEO and founder. He was a Maths teacher for 10 years and has founded two businesses – Eco Web Hosting and Codestars, which has taught over a million people how to code. He lives in Cambridge with his wife Kirsten and two young sons.

Joshua is the co-founder of two schools assessment products: Carousel Learning (a quizzing and retrieval practice tool) and Smartgrade (a MAT summative assessment platform). Previously, he founded Assembly a school data and analytics platform that was acquired by Community Brands in 2019 and was part of the leadership team at Ark, the schools network and education charity.

Stephen Sadler’s career began at a London Design Consultancy before moving into the field of exhibition design, international sales, marketing and product development.

In early 2002 Stephen moved away from the Events Industry to Education, applied for a temporary post at his former Secondary School, East Barnet School (EBS), with a view to going back into the City, but almost 19 years later he is still there.

Stephen is Head of Digital Learning, Creativity and Innovation at EBS and his subject specialism is Robotics and Design and Technology. During his time at EBS, Stephen has had the sole responsibility of developing the CAD CAM for staff and students in the school. He also introduced Autodesk software and its mobile applications into the EBS Design and Technology curriculum.

Stephen was the first to introduce a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to a UK Secondary School and he is the schools Head of Digital Learning, Creativity and Innovation. He has pioneered within the field of EdTech and in 2011 introduced Robotics and STEM education to the wider Technology Curriculum, resulting in a dramatic increase in students now wanting to learn about Robotics, Design & Engineering.

Stephen is an honorary member of the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation STEM Hall of Fame. He has also received numerous awards, including Digital Design and Technology Teacher of the Year, VEX Robotics Teacher of the Year and he is VEX World Mentor of the Year.

He has also set up the first all-girls Robotics Teams, who have competed both nationally and internationally as well as host training and CPD events of their own as students for teachers across London.

Stephen has inspired, motivated, taught and assisted in so many ways. He has made an outstanding contribution to Design and Technology at East Barnet School and has since gone on to set up and share his best practice through Primary School Initiatives, demonstrations to Teachers across the UK and more.

Paul Smith is an experienced lecturer at Wakefield College with a demonstrated history of working in the Information Technology and Creative industry. Currently skilled in creating e-learning content, web development and identifying new ways in which technology can benefit learning and course delivery.

Rachel Stovold is a Programme Manager at the Peter Jones Foundation. She oversees the Tycoon Enterprise Competition and Alumni Programme.

Rachel’s background has focused on youth programmes: having previously led on the delivery of the National Citizen Service, a government-funded initiative that supports social action and social mixing among young people.

My name is Jada-Maya Modha from East Barnet School and I am a senior member and mentor of EBS Robotics. I am in now in Year 11 studying GCSEs.

My team name is known internationally as Girl Bots. Girl Bots have been competing professionally in Robotics competitions since I was in Year 7 (five years). This season I am currently competing with my Robot I have designed, engineered, built and programmed using the VEX Robotics engineering educational platform. I am the sole programmer, driver, designer and engineer of my Robot.

My aim is to win the UK VEX Robotics National Championships and then go on to represent the UK at the VEX World Championships, held in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.

One of my biggest achievements to date was giving a keynote presentation to 4,000+ executives at Autodesk OTX Copenhagen, Denmark in April 2018. 

One aspect of VEX Robotics that I really enjoy is mentoring the younger students, as I can pass on my knowledge. I can also link and map everything Mr Sadler teaches through EBS Robotics to my GCSE Engineering curriculum.

In most cases, I think I probably involve myself in more STEM at school through EBS Robotics extra-curricular activities than any other subject. I have learned so much since I started participating in Year 7. Robotics is my favorite subject at school.

I also represent Girls in STEM with my work in educational robotics and I hope to pursue a career in Design Engineering when I am older.

Nicola is currently Assistant Principal for teaching and development and lead on remote learning for the academy since September 2020.