Sherry speaking at the Houses of Parliament

Sherry Coutu has pulled off another excellent year for Silicon Valley Comes to the UK. I was lucky enough to attend the Houses of Parliament and listen to thought leaders from around the globe on what they see as the future of education.

There were some great speakers including Diane Tavenner (Summit Schools), John Katzman (Noodle Education), Mike Keller (Stanford Library), Ben Nelson (Minerva Project), Louise Rogers (Times Educational Supplement), Eben Upton (Raspberry Pi) and Conrad Wolfram (Mathematica).

I found Diane of Summit Schools particularly interesting. Summit Schools in California are re-imagining the classroom.

Here are just a few of the things they are doing:

• Classrooms without walls
• Whiteboards on the back of chairs
• Weekly 1 to 1 student mentoring which are student led
• 8 weeks of study away from school in the community and in business
• Teachers are conducting high value coaching in classrooms and students are watching videos at home (the flipped classroom approach)
• Student’s have individualised learning plans

Mathematica explained the importance of teaching Maths through coding. Conrad explained that coding is to Maths what composing is to English.

Webanywhere are running some computer coding workshops for free in collaboration with Bradford University. You can visit our Codeanywhere site to learn more.

In addition, you can learn more about Silicon Valley Comes to the UK at the SVC2UK website.