Inaugural lecture from Professor Michael Jopling

Digital technologies have infiltrated most areas of our lives, but schools still look and operate very much like they did 50 or even 100 years ago. Should this worry or comfort us?

To address this question, Professor Michael Jopling examines tensions, or divides, which have pervaded his research in and with schools. These include tensions between privilege and disadvantage; between progress and learning; and, most alarmingly, between technological utopianism and apocalypse. 

Drawing on postdigital perspectives, the lecture cautions against simplistic solutions such as banning mobile phones in school and proposes that we need to abandon notions of integrating technologies in schools in favour of understanding how they are already inextricably entangled. This might help us all to move beyond our depths to rethink how learning is approached in education more broadly. 

Free event. All are welcome. If you would like to attend, please register online no later than 48 hours prior to the event.