IPA’s Educational Publishers Forum met in London

On 19-20 January, the IPA's Educational Publishers Forum (EPF) met in London ahead of BETT - the educational technology trade show. Mark West an Education Specialist from UNESCO prompted good conversations about how technological change has always been a source of both excitement and fear and what kind of pro-active approach can be taken to ensure that new technologies serve our shared objectives of high eduactional outcomes rather than de-railing the whole enterprise.

The presence of Thomas Van Cauwenberghe, Station Chief at the Belgian 'Edtech Station' of the European EdTech Alliance, ensured constructive discussion about the evolving role Edtech has in education publishing. We heard from individual members from Italy and the UK about the evolution of physical and digital educational resources in their countries. AI adoption by teachers is advancing, and a mix of physical and digital resources is a clear preference with pupils engaging increasingly with online content linked to a physical resource. But OERs (open educational resources) are not a panacea, and of increasing concern are government interventions in education around the world.

The presence of colleagues from Africa (Samuel Kolawole, the Chair of the African EPF) and Latin America (Ramiro Villalba, Chair of the LatAm EPF) also meant that our converations covered many different global realities of education. AI was obviously part of that mix and earlier in the week, the OECD held a webinar on Exploring Effective Uses of Generative AI in Education and published a report on the same topic.

This was Brian Gilsenan's last meeting as Chair of the EPF. His successor will be announced soon.