Knowledge workers are active across many industry sectors – anywhere, in fact, where a person needs to use their intellect and judgment to synthesize information and make decisions. Artificial intelligence (AI) is proving to be a help to knowledge workers in numerous ways, across a wide range of sectors. 

It might read as rather stating the obvious, but knowledge workers need insights to work with. This only exists when raw data is put through some sort of filter, but processing data can take a human much longer than it can take a machine, even when they’re working with coherent data sets. When more data sets are added in, with variables of differing nature, perhaps also with weighting, the human brain can become overwhelmed.

Not only are computers faster at working with big data, but they also don’t make mistakes due to oversight or fatigue, and can keep going 24 hours a day. With data analytics, machines can identify trends, spot anomalies, and understand nuances – and bring to our attention things we might easily dismiss or overlook. They can flag up the expected, the unexpected, and the unusual. 

The key benefit of industrialized AI is it helps knowledge workers spend more time acting on knowledge, or “insights”, and less on actually discovering that knowledge in the first place. That way, people can optimize their use of time. We look at four very different industry sectors and show how AI helps knowledge workers in them do a better job.

Medical diagnosis

Highly trained specialists need to analyze increasing volumes of data to help diagnose more and more patients with potential illnesses. Indeed, they have a data mountain to climb. The last thing medical specialist want to do is miss out on opportunities to help people as they sift these mountains of data.

In many areas of diagnostic medicine, AI is taking on the heavy lifting. It can do this by reviewing large amounts of data at speed, alerting professionals to anomalies and to specific characteristics it has been asked to identify. 

Moorfields Eye Hospital

At Moorfields, a team has developed a way to use AI to assess the severity of a form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), as well as how it’s progressing and responding to treatment. Manually doing this work can take up to an hour per eye, and is prone to human error. The AI can match, and even outperform, predictions made by specialists in a fraction of a second. This is one of many ways Moorfields Eye Charity is researching the use of AI. 

Personalized Education 

Education is about the giving and receiving of knowledge. But individuals don’t all learn in the same way or at the same speed, and some of us need more support or nudging than others. At the higher levels, in particular, people can want to be more free to learn at their own pace. Educational institutions need to work differently to support and help them.

AI can be used to deliver educational content at different paces, and in different forms. Students can repeat learning exercises in different ways to help them fully understand concepts or complete learning modules. AI can help identify students who might need support, and provide useful nudges. 

Georgia State University

Georgia State University has been using an AI-enhanced messaging tool called Pounce since 2016. In 2021 the chatbot was integrated into course content, including so it could issue reminders to complete work by deadlines, and to take practice tests. Students getting this help turned in better grades. Using AI in this way helps teachers give their students the best support and assistance.

Mining and exploration

Mining involves complex processes and data analytics to identify the best localities in which to work. It also requires the use of precision equipment, which needs to be kept at peak performance and must maintain the highest possible safety and compliance standards.

Predictive maintenance can be used to help diagnose equipment and ensure parts are replaced before they break and call work to a halt. AI can also be used to analyze different data sets and suggest the most likely locations to mine. The technology might also be able to analyze the environmental conditions inside mines to support compliance – and play a role in maximizing yields by sorting the materials mined.

Streamlining mining logistics

A multi-national resources company, which manages freight of more than $1 billion annually for shipping across the world, wanted to enhance logistics with analytics capabilities. They tapped into Infosys Nia. This is an AI platform that helps companies manage their logistics – and combines data in numerous formats to help improve the success rate of discovery and exploration. It can be used to provide humans such as geologists and engineers with detailed information they can analyze further to help do their own jobs more efficiently.

City planning 

Cities and towns are complex, and people need to be able to move around. The right facilities – housing, work, leisure – need to be in the right places, too. We also are becoming increasingly aware of the need to reduce car travel and pollution and to increase access to open spaces and entertainment locally. Urban planners have their work cut out comparing variables and finding the solutions that work best.

AI-based tools can be used to model different scenarios for any particular area plan, taking into account environmental factors like heat, wind, or rainfall, and making the tweaks necessary to minimize negative environmental effects. In major cities, AI can analyze data on real places to support further development, such as transport planning, and provide analytics humans can use to better allocate resources. 

Transport for Wales

Transport for Wales (TfW) has worked with a third-party AI specialist, Optibus, to analyze bus use, demand for public transport, and movement patterns. Analyzing this data has allowed TfW to improve bus schedules, punctuality, and journey times.  

Using the Optibus software, TfW worked with all 22 local authorities to design a better public transport network with the aim of improving the quality of service and making buses more reliable, especially in rural areas.

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that supply chains need to be able to overcome the unexpected. Especially if you’re in the business of refrigerated cargo.

That’s because perishable goods give you no second chances. You either move them, or you lose them. So much so that the United Nations Environment Food Waste Index 2021 predicts that 17% of total global food production is wasted.

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As cities continue to grow, innovative technology is emerging to help address rising demands on public services and infrastructure and the issues that affect everyone, such as the environment, national security and public health.

This report investigates how data and cloud-based technology is being used with the Smart Cities Council’s framework to promote livability, workability and sustainability in the cities of tomorrow, and where inclusivity fits into this picture.

Download now to find out how technology can deliver on these core values and transform our environment.

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The canes used by visually impaired people are getting a high-tech makeover.

A new “smart cane” detects obstacles with ultrasound, but that’s not all. Users can also pair the cane with a smartphone to give them information about shops and restaurants they’re passing.

This state-of-the-art cane is the work of Kursat Ceylan, a Turkish inventor who was born blind.

Ceylan, 35, was inspired to invent the smart cane after being injured three years ago in an accident that left him scarred.

Ceylan was visiting New York for a United Nations meeting and was struggling to navigate the city streets. He was checking GPS directions with his smartphone while also holding his white cane and pulling a suitcase behind him when he hit his head on a sign.

After the injury, Ceylan helped found WeWALK, a tech company that created an electronic handle for the top of a cane. The handle uses ultrasound to detect obstacles and pairs with a smartphone to give voice feedback and help keep its visually impaired user safe and informed.

“We are providing an opportunity to visually impaired people to be a part of the social life,” Ceylan told Reuters at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where his company is competing for the title of “best impact startup.”

Thousands of visually impaired people in nearly 60 countries use his company’s $599 foldable cane, Ceylan said. He added that WeWALK is collaborating with Microsoft and other companies to add more features.

“As you know, we are thinking about fully autonomous vehicles,” Ceylan said. “WeWALK is a device to provide a fully autonomous blind journey to visually impaired people.”

Recently, many technological advances have been harnessed to help visually impaired and blind people navigate the world.

Last year, the cloud communications platform Twilio revealed it’s powering Be My Eyes, an app for the visually impaired.

Be My Eyes pairs cameras and video chat to help 178,000 visually impaired people get help from more than three million volunteers. For example, the user can point the camera at a sign, document, or even food packaging so the remote volunteer can read it out.

The chat function can also be used with companies that support the app, including Microsoft, Google and Lloyds Banking, making it easier for visually impaired people to get help using their services.

COVID-19 is an unprecedented event that has put local governments across the world under extreme pressure. This, at a time when many cities, counties, and boroughs were already embarking on optimistic and challenging digital transformations.

Local government must serve both, whilst creating a new world of work for their employees.

Legacy technology issues can trip up IT teams sprinting to deliver sustainable solutions—but hybrid cloud offers a clear path for transition and enables future-fit innovations.

Today’s leaders in local government need to understand how technology and policy mesh, to build out an innovative, intelligent world that enables local government to do its best work, while confidently serving citizens and building tomorrow.

Benjamin Franklin wrote “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Fast forward to today, and the answers to life’s endless questions are a few keystrokes away or a shouted request to Alexa. Lost? Your smartphone can tell you where you are and get you from A to B. Need to check the weather? Ask Google and you’ll get an instant, local forecast. Want to know what’s happening in the world? Log in to Facebook or Twitter for a personalised stream of news.

Yet, few of us stop to question the truth behind what our devices tell us, or as German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer puts it: “When the soothsayers work with computer algorithms rather than tarot cards, we take their predictions seriously.”

Some say this illusion of certainty makes us less resilient to life’s uncertainties, while others are embracing uncertainty to make the algorithms behind the answers smarter still.

The illusion of certainty

For Generation Z, who were born into the information age, technology is the first port of call for information. It’s creating a sense of dependence, according to Dominique Thompson, a GP, author and TEDx speaker who specialises in working with young people and mental health. “Their first response to any question, be it their homework or something from a TV show, is to Google it.”

Yet many are lacking the skills to question where the information comes from. “You can go online and search for anything; the illusion is the first thing that pops up is somehow definitive, but people aren’t looking to see who created it; they’re not going under the covers,” says Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research. “It concerns me when my kids say they’ve learned something from the internet or Instagram. My daughter commented most of her news in the last day or two came from Instagram. That’s not a good source of news. Social media feeds, especially Facebook, are filtering what they show you based on how you act, so it’s a biased response,” he added.

Social media networks create a filter bubble that reinforces our values and beliefs, which creates a false sense of security. “Technology allows us to reduce uncertainty and control our world,” says Ellen Henriksen, clinical psychologist and founding host of the podcast Savvy Psychologist. “We can stay immersed in worlds of our own choosing.”

But when the bubble bursts, it causes anxiety and distress, according to Thompson. “You have to be quite confident to venture outside [of that bubble], and I think a lot of young people, in particular, lack that confidence. It might shake them,” she said. “But it’s important to make yourself uncomfortable, to venture out on Twitter a little and see what’s out there. We have to go through the looking glass and realise that there are opposing views.”

That means learning to tolerate uncertainty, even embrace it as a life skill. “Having information at our fingertips leads to a lack of practice tolerating uncertainty,” says Hendriksen. “And when we are faced with big uncertainties in life such as ‘what career path should I take?’ we are less able to deal with that because that muscle is underdeveloped.

“Let’s take COVID-19, we’re learning… there’s no right answer,” she adds. “Do I send my kid to summer camp because he’s been isolated for four months and I’m worried about his social development? Or do I not send him because it would increase the risk of exposure? Being able to tolerate uncertainty and make the best decision we can with the information we have at the time is an important skill to build.”

Intolerance of uncertainty can have a negative impact, said Thompson. She cites differences in the way that junior doctors and consultants handle medical uncertainty. “Take, for example, the case of an elderly lady coming into the hospital with some abdominal pain,” she says. “We perform a load of tests but can’t find what’s wrong, and she feels fine. The patient can go home, but the young doctors won’t discharge her because they don’t know what caused it. They perform endless tests because they can’t live with not knowing.”

Does not compute

Others argue that powerful computer models have raised our expectations – perhaps unreasonably. Conrad Wolfram, CEO of Wolfram Research Europe and author of The Math(s) Fix explains: “If you asked 50 or 100 years ago, do you think you can predict exactly what’s going to happen in this pandemic…[or] how hot it’s going to be in 50 years, most people would just think it was crazy that one could even attempt to do that. But computers, computation, maths are apparently able to predict anything precisely, or model anything, so people now flip this on its head and are sort of expecting the certainty.”

Our ability to quantify means often we’re looking in the wrong place. “Numbers or quantifying things has assumed importance beyond the ability to judge. If you’re driving a car, the main thing you’ve got to measure is your speed, but you could still be driving very badly. People assume that the quantification is sacrosanct,” says Wolfram.

Brett Frischmann, co-author of Re-Engineering Humanity, agrees. He cites the example of fitness trackers, which have been designed to track steps as a measure of how active we are. “The device tracks certain things because they’re easy or they’re more efficient, or it has the relevant sensor or the proxies are good. And that leads you to think that that’s the thing to track, step taking is the relevant measure of fitness,” he says. “In fact, it’s relying on bad proxies. I may have just moved my arm a bunch of times, and the motion fooled it. And so, I actually didn’t really take 10,000 steps.”

Instead, Wolfram says people and algorithms should work together. “People say we shouldn’t allow people to use a computer to calculate equations before they know how to do it by hand, because maybe the computer will fool you, [but] computers and other automated devices help us progress. The question is how you avoid being misled.”

There’s a need for what Wolfram calls “computational thinking”. “It is a new way of thinking. In a new world where we’re sharing with artificially intelligent machines, we as humans need to find a new way to ask the questions,” he said

Some of this thinking is evident in Wolfram Alpha, which he describes as a knowledge engine; distinct from a search engine. “If you think about a search engine, what it does is go out and ask if anyone else has a similar question and they try and answer it. You go to a library and ask for books on a subject and the librarian points you in the right direction.”

In contrast, Wolfram Alpha’s aim was to take “systematic knowledge” and make it computable, as Wolfram explains: “It’s more like a research assistant. You give it a precise question and ask it to come up with a precise answer.”

To produce these precise answers, Wolfram Research has bought information resources that sit behind Wolfram Alpha. “We’ve curated a lot from various sources that we’ve often had to clean,” said Wolfram. “It’s not a replacement for search, it just works differently, and it works well when you have something that is somewhat computational but also fuzzy.”

The company’s proprietary Wolfram Language is responsible for computing the answers from these sources. The programming language began life as Mathematica and is built from various “commands, thousands of functions and the largest set of built-in algorithms”.

“You’re presented with precisely what you’re asked for, or it may say, I don’t know the answer so that there’s a certainty in that lack of certainty,” said Wolfram.

An uncertain future

Uncertainty may actually be the key to delivering smarter programs, including AI. US startup Gamalon, for example, is developing a technique for teaching machines to handle language, which embraces ambiguity. The firm developed a way of teaching machines to process language that can sit behind a chatbot.

MIT Technology Review argues that it “lets a computer hold a more meaningful and coherent conversation by providing a way to deal with… multiple meanings. If a person says or types something ambiguous, the system makes a judgement about what was most likely meant.”

Applying ambiguity in other areas could make for smarter, safer AI. Carroll Wainwright is a research scientist at the Partnership on AI and specialises in the technical aspects of AI safety. Intelligent cars, he said, are an example where too much certainty can be dangerous. “There was a high-

profile death in one of the Tesla autopilot cases. A truck moved in front of the vehicle, and it was a cloudy day. The sky was white, and the truck had a big white side. The algorithm didn’t distinguish between the sky and the truck, so it ran into the truck. So, you could couch this as a problem with the certainty of the algorithm,” he said.

Wainwright is building an environment that will train AI “agents” to question when there’s a lack of certainty. The example he gives is that of an intelligent robot designed to fetch coffee from another room when the door is shut. The agent would stop and ask how to get through it, allowing you to open the door. “In this instance, uncertainty can be incredibly helpful. Essentially, the agent, rather than taking brash actions, will stop and ask you, ‘Should I open the door or should I just smash through it to get you your coffee faster?’”

It’s a strange example, but one that teaches us neither tech nor humans know it all. “We’re entering an era where the value add isn’t so much knowledge-based, knowing a fact, it’s knowing how to interact with AI or computational machinery to get the best decisions,” said Wolfram. “The only way to do that, I think, is for our education to step up to another level so that we can then know what the questions are, know how to manage the AI.”

What if your clothing was intelligent? Perhaps your shirt could monitor your vital signs and report any issues directly to your doctor. The face masks that have now become part of everyday life could change colour or make a sound if they come into contact with COVID-19 virus molecules. It all sounds like science fiction, but many of the fundamental technologies that could make these scenarios a reality are all in active development.

Embedding electronics into fabrics has crossed many different sectors: Couture over the last decade has dabbled with electronics using LED lighting to give the catwalk a tech feel. Fashion designers, including Alexander McQueen, ruminated on the impending digital Armageddon thanks to the Y2K threat with his flashing LED clothing in 2000. More recent examples include a gaze activated dress that reacts when someone looks at the wearer designed by Ying Gao, and a denim jacket from Pauline van Dongen’s that can give you a massage, as well as all of ‘Biomedia designer’ and founder of SENSOREE Kristin Neidlinger designs, which offer therapeutic, bio-responsive fashion.

Making the clothes we wear on a more day-to-day basis intelligent, though, presents many challenges. Professor Steve Beeby, who leads the Smart Electronic Materials and Systems (SEMS) group in the Department of Electronics and Computers Science at the University of Southampton, explains to IT Pro: “The eFabric market, from my perspective, is still characterised by poor levels of integration for the electronics and sensing functionality, and the reliance on traditional battery technology to power the garment. There are some interesting examples of eClothing in the fitness and elite sports sectors. However, they are expensive and still suffer from low levels of integration with the electronics themselves into the garments.”

That’s not to say that eFabrics are a lost cause, though. Dr Kerri Akiwowo, a lecturer in textiles at Loughborough University School of Design and Creative Arts, says an interdisciplinary approach, combining expertise from designers, engineers, technologists and scientists, is the path to commercial viability for these types of materials.

“The merging of different technologies is an exciting prospect,” she says. “Duality in digital processing and integrated smart features in fabrics is attractive and offers huge potential in terms of both design and function.”

New eFabrics

The focus when discussing the development of eFabrics and intelligent textiles is often on the technology being embedded into the fabric. In order to achieve this, though, the manufacturing process will need to change. Anshul Gupta, senior analyst, Gartner explains: “There are eFabrics in development. One of the main challenges is manufacturing them at scale. We have seen a range of eTextile based products from university-based research centres, but they have been unable to convert their R&D into tangible products. The products that have made it to market have been in small volumes.”

Speaking to IT Pro, Connie Huffa, a textile engineer and co-owner of Fabdesigns, which developed the Flyknit shoes for Nike, explains the direct impact of these limitations on people like her.

“In our industry, we have been limited to one or two embedded wires. This is due to the textile machine manufacturers themselves only having the capability of inputting two wires into a flat-knitting machine. Embroidery is limited to one wire at a time. This is why we built our feed device so that we can make many circuits,” she says.

“However, it’s important to note we have a divergence in our industry. Consumer product companies want plug and play components and processes that are already tested and meet specific standards, in order to meet their 3 to 6-month development business models. This is the apparel sector with an apparel development model of rapid prototyping and very different values. Technical firms that make medical, military, hard wearables, and in the aerospace sector, typically have longer term development models of 18 months to 3 years or more, which includes their own testing, validation, stage and gates for product risks, process risks, and launch.”

A fundamental component of all eFabrics is power. Advances have been made to embed sensor technology, for instance, into the weave of a garment, but all these technologies still require power. While this is a complicated issue, it may in fact be one of the easier challenges to overcome.

“When we consider how eFabrics will be powered, the weave structure of most garments is actually a good scaffold for batteries and supercapacitors,” explains Southampton University’s Beeby. “We are developing power technologies, but if you want to create a product, the challenges are how your eFabrics will meet practical use such as washing. The mechanical abrasion of the washing process must be solved to build a tangible product you can market.”

Charging, however, may be even more simple, with Beeby suggesting “you can easily see a scenario where your wardrobe becomes the charging environment for a uniform you might wear or a 'smart' suit you have.”

This was echoed by James Hayward, principal analyst, IDTechEx who comments: “All eTextiles will have some form of box filled with the electronics and the power supply to simplify matters, which has to withstand normal usage, which includes washing.

“There is research to embed the electronics into the weave that a garment is made from, but the reality at the moment is that a box of electronics needs to be attached to the fabric.”

Advances are being made to resolve these issues, though. One such innovation comes from the partnership between Powercast Corporation and Liquid X. Utilising Liquid X's proprietary ink technology, manufacturers can print circuitry directly onto a garment, add Powercast’s wireless power technology and a battery, and seal this all into the garment during the manufacturing process.

Smart garments

Giving the clothes we wear intelligence is the ultimate goal for the eTextiles industry. While fashion and novelty may be one use, there are more practical applications, too, notably in health.

Inroads are already being made in this area, particularly in the consumer market. Hexoskin, for example, has smart garments with built-in ECGs, pulse and heart rate monitoring. Connecting to your smartphone, you can monitor key aspects of your physiology.

IDTechEx’s James Hayward comments: “Physiological monitoring in the medical sector and sports is clearly an area of development. Tracking these sectors from over the last five years, the leading sports brands were very interested in the possibilities that eFabrics could deliver, but have slowed their developments as the major challenges developing these fabrics and clothing presented themselves.”

Connecting smart clothing to an ecosystem that enables real-time data communications is on the horizon. We already have fast wireless data connectivity with the wearable technologies in the marketplace. Smart garments will take advantage of future data ecosystems as they mature thanks to the burgeoning IoT sector.

“Intelligent fabrics are here to stay and will continue to infiltrate infrastructure,” says Loughborough University’s Dr Akiwowo. “The signs are already out there in the form of wearable displays, high-tech medical textiles, functional clothing, sensory materials, energy harvesting fabrics, phase change substrates, and thermal regulation capability, to name a few. As technology advances, so will electronic, digital and smart products. Although fragmented and yet to fully break commercial ground, the sector continues to mature. The next 10 years points to an intriguing landscape for tactile intelligence.”

Equipping the clothes we wear with a level of intelligence and connectivity is some way off a mass market product you can buy from your favourite retailer. Specialist sectors such as elite sports and in some medical environments, smart eFabrics will appear in increasing numbers. For now, eTextiles are a novelty, but eventually they may well become commonplace.

The majority (80%) of CEOs say less than half of all innovation projects are successful within their organizations, according to research.

The survey, carried out by Broadridge Financial Solutions and the G100 Network, was geared toward uncovering how executives discover and implement emerging tech.

When it comes to adopting emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud and digital environments, CEOs across the board agreed that such tech can provide tremendous value to an organization.

Of those surveyed, 67% said improved client experience and retention was the biggest benefit of emerging tech, while 57% cited new revenue opportunities.

According to the survey, there are some hurdles to overcome when implementing these technologies. Respondents noted that the three biggest hurdles organizations face in terms of tech implementation are access to qualified talent (55%), legacy systems architecture (54%) and an internal culture that’s resistant to change (52%).

David Niles, President of G100 Network shared: "Forward-thinking CEOs will reassess assumptions about emerging technologies that might have previously been hindered by organizational resistance, regulations or customer adoption.

"Not all innovations will succeed, but companies that fail to adapt and change face eventual disruption. Successful transformation requires not only experimentation with emerging technologies but also a change in business processes and team alignment around a new way of doing business."

While the value of emerging technologies is clear, when it comes to adoption, only 42% of CEOs consider themselves "Fast Followers," meaning these CEOs have yet to establish a defined approach to experimentation and implementation of emerging tech.

Further, 26% of respondents consider themselves "Innovators" when it comes to using industry-leading technology. A quarter of respondents consider themselves "Experimenters".

In the midst of the current pandemic, many companies have been forced to accelerate and adapt their strategies. CEOs no longer have the privilege of a measured approach to their organization’s digital transformation, and instead, many have been pushed into digital leadership regardless of their preparation for such a task.

Though the survey was taken before lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, the outcome of the survey speaks volumes.

"Market uncertainty and volatility are creating immense pressures for companies across industry sectors, leading to an even greater reliance on new technology to drive change across the enterprise," said Tim Gokey, CEO of Broadridge.

"Forward-thinking CEOs who embrace next-generation technology to drive their business roadmap against specific success metrics are best positioned to succeed in this rapidly evolving environment. Recent events have also highlighted the importance of new technologies including Digital and Cloud to adapt to a changing world."

On a purely cosmetic level, the school classroom has changed little since education became compulsory in the 19th century. Tables and chairs sit neatly to face a whiteboard, with the teacher at the heart of every lesson. However, look closely at a modern-day classroom and you may notice a subtle difference from those of yesterday: technology.

Teachers and students now have digital tools at their disposal that have completely changed the learning possibilities in and out of the classroom. According to a recent survey from BESA (British Educational Suppliers Association), 71% of UK primary and 76% of secondary schools are now making use of tablets in the classroom. Furthermore, by the end of 2016, there were close to 1 million tablets available to students in classrooms across UK schools and academies.

With children becoming more digital savvy, the onus is on teachers to be able to keep up and communicate in a way their students understand. One piece of technology instrumental to this is the interactive whiteboard. The ability to create games, tests and bring students up to collaborate on the board, as well as traditional whiteboard duties, make interactive whiteboards a valuable classroom addition.

A leader in this field is Canada-based SMART Technologies. Founded in 1987 by David Martin and Nancy Knowlton, SMART introduced its first SMART Board interactive display in 1991. Its pioneering touch control allows teachers and students to work with applications and leave annotations using pens or their fingertips. Today, SMART has a range of three boards to fit various educational needs and budgets: the SMART Board 7000 series, 6000 and 2000. But it isn't just the hardware that's important SMART's software powers learning and, in the hands of the right teacher, can unlock the board's true potential.

The SMART Learning Suite combines all the tools and software needed to deliver lessons, assess students, create and execute game-based activities and foster collaboration in the classroom. SMART Notebook, for instance, allows teachers to create multimedia lessons from their work or home computer and run them through the board. SMART lab offers teachers the chance to make custom games for their students, while SMART amp is a collaborative workspace allowing multiple users to create content together.

Of course, cutting edge hardware and software alone isn't going to revolutionise education. A 2015 report from OECD stated that educational technology needs to work in tandem with good teaching in order to improve learning results. When Pinders Primary School in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, needed to upgrade its ICT offering, it teamed up with consultancy Elementary Technology and landed on SMART as a partner. As a school where 80% of students speak English as an additional language (EAL), Pinders sought a solution that could engage children through visuals.

"You need a lot of visuals, a lot of high stimulus to get them locked into reading, writing and maths," said Lorna Kemplay, head teacher of Pinders. "As an EAL school visual aspects are really important, they can't always understand what we're saying but if they can see it, they can understand it." Kemplay also stressed the importance of supporting the hardware with robust software. "If you only invest in the hardware it's a waste of money because you can't use it," she explained. "The reason we invested in SMART, in the hardware and the software, is because it was something they (the teachers) were all familiar with. With the new technology that we've bought into we've got a package that includes continuous professional development, so we get new information and get shown how to use it."

Kemplay added that training for the teachers was an important piece of the puzzle: "That's really essential and that's what we've had from Elementary Technology. Staff were really enthused about what they've been shown, how the iPads could link into the interactive whiteboards, how that means the whole class is going to be engaged at the same time, other than just a couple of children coming up and doing it."

It's a similar success story at Sharlston Community School in West Yorkshire. Head teacher Julie Dunderdale-Smith knew the school required a major technology upgrade, but was concerned about the cost. Like Pinders, Sharlston worked with Elementary Technology to conduct a health check and establish what equipment the school required. The solution came through SMART's ClaaS subscription, which allowed Sharlston to spread the cost over several years while upgrading the entire school at once.

See more SMART Technologies customer stories here

"Elementary Technology gave us several options and one of the options was the SMART ClaaS where we're able to pay annually," said Dunderdale-Smith. "Financially it's meant we can plan ahead and have all of the SMART Boards installed in all of the classrooms.

"That meant that all the classes were having access to the latest technology. More importantly, the teachers were given all the new equipment they need to teach dynamic, engaging lessons. I'm confident that in every classroom the teachers and the children have got what they need."

Dunderdale-Smith added that SMART has made a monumental difference at Sharlston, with the technology leading to greater productivity in lessons. "I think the biggest thing for me is every single child that comes through that door now seems to be engaged with our lessons. Every single subject, every single child will want to be involved," she said. "Teachers have found it much easier to use than they thought they would. Some of the activities you'll see, they'll look really, really impressive but they're not that difficult to make."

SMART's influence spans beyond the UK, too. Around 3 million classroom worldwide are equipped with SMART hardware, while 5 million software downloads are registered annually. Budgets can often be stretched, but SMART's solutions have proved time and again that they're a strong fit for any forward-thinking educator.

SMART Technologies is transforming education discover more here.

Mark Hartwright teaches at Stafford's Castlechurch Primary School using the SMART Board 6000 from SMART Technologies. With SMART interactive displays, teachers and pupils can use pens and even their fingertips to work on the board simultaneously, creating an extension of the traditional whiteboard with quizzes, game-based activities and tests to help learning. Here, Mark takes us through a typical working day and explains how he uses SMART to inspire his pupils.

by Mark Hartwright

For the first five years of teaching this mainly involved playing films, displaying images and writing on top of the interactive display boards. It wasn't until I joined Pheasey Park Farm school in Walsall that I began to see the full potential of SMART. There they rolled out training and I soon discovered how the technology could significantly benefit both teaching and learning.

Now I teach 5 and 6 year olds in Year 1 at Castlechurch Primary School in Stafford, and SMART is integral to my working day (my classroom has a SMART 6000 with Notebook 17.1 software). I teach all subjects, so in the morning we focus on Maths and English, then in the afternoon we are topic-based around a theme. When I arrive in the morning I load up the board with an early start' task. Today it was practising spelling, so I set up a picture clue on the board telling the children which books they need to get out. They can get on with this task straight away, which is particularly helpful as I can spend some time talking to parents. I've also used the board to create a visual timetable of all the events happening at school today. We can come back to this throughout the day so the children know what they'll be doing next.

Finding the answers together

I start today's lessons off with Maths and have already devised a lab activity on the SMART Board. I want the entire class to have input so I bring students up in groups to interact with the board. It's them driving the learning rather than me, and it's a case of them discovering the right answer rather than me just telling them. If they end up getting a few answers wrong we can pause the game and look for the solution together. In Year 1 they are still at a very young age and are making the transition from learning through play with a SMART Board I'm helping to bridge that gap by giving them a game that's fun and exciting to do. For English the SMART Board really comes into its own when I'm teaching spelling or handwriting. Before the lesson I use the page recorder, which allows me to capture my own handwriting. In the lesson I just hit play on the screen and the children can see how letters and words are being formed. If a particular child is struggling with their handwriting task they can just walk up to the board and press play themselves.

In the afternoons we have continuous provision, which is more an early years style of teaching with activities set up around the classroom. I'll sit in my focus group where I'll teach approximately six children while the rest of the class will do activities based on a particular theme. Today we're continuing our look at the Owl Babies story, so running alongside the focus group there's a table with Lego to build woodland creatures, a writing group, a laptop with Notebook files and prompts, and a lab activity running on the SMART Board for children to play. The latter is useful for consolidating learning and giving students the chance to revisit something from earlier in the day. For example, today in Maths we continued to improve our speed when recalling number bonds to 10 - lab activity gives the children another chance to look at it in the afternoon.

Splitting the children up into smaller groups is a great way for me to get some high-quality teaching in with my focus group. If I'm trying to get an entire class to do a task at the same time it can become complicated. SMART has enabled me to split up the classroom and do some focused teaching for 20 minutes, then let the students do another activity that is more learning through play. The children tend to love technology, and it's a great way into learning. It never feels like a chore to them, particular if it involves something interactive like playing a game. I've got a student at the moment who doesn't speak English, but she's more than happy to come and play. The games are straightforward and she can see what to do, so it's a universal way to learn.

The indispensable SMART Notebook

In terms of the SMART tools I use the most, I'd pretty much refuse to teach if I don't have SMART Notebook! I use the input system of the iQ feature to run my laptop screen through the board. I've taught on competitors' boards before and it all comes down to software. I actually downloaded SMART Notebook to use on other boards, primarily because it's so much better than anything else on offer. Although many teachers like to use pens to interact with the board, I prefer interacting through touch it's tactile learning and you immediately feel part of it. I never felt like I had to learn to use the board because it's very intuitive. That's exactly the same for students; it's fluid and they can quickly get on with their learning rather than be bogged down by clunky pieces of tech. It helps to build that relationship you have with the children and if you're using a fun stimulus, like the SMART Board, then you can build that relationship better and have fun. If you're giving them something fun and exciting to do they're going to like what they're doing and in a roundabout way they'll like you as well and that relationship gets better.

One thing I'd say to any schools or teachers looking to adopt SMART: go out and try it. Until you've seen how easy it is to use, you can't see its full potential. If you can see the key features, particularly the lab activity games for primary schools, you'll see how easy it is to make them. SMART has changed my teaching completely. Now it's a lot more organised, a lot more structured, a lot more fun and a lot more interactive. Once you see a child use SMART software and the enjoyment they get out of it, to move, touch, manipulate, and play with their learning, you'll quickly realise that the technology sells itself.

SMART Technologies is transforming education discover more here.

Imagine a classroom. What do you see? Chairs and tables in neat rows facing the teacher's desk? Perhaps some posters on the walls? Whatever amalgamation of these things you have in place there's one key element that will be in everyone's imaginary classroom: a blackboard.

In some senses, schools have changed little since education first became compulsory. There's no corporal punishment any more, of course, and learning by rote has been replaced by more creative and thoughtful teaching methods. But the essentials are the same and the blackboard - or, more commonly now, whiteboard - sits at the very heart of this. It's the focal point for lessons.

With the world having moved so far in virtually every dimension, but especially in technology, it's perhaps surprising that a time traveller from the Victorian era would largely recognise a school room if they saw one.

While it's not necessarily a bad thing that the layout of classrooms have stayed similar from generation to generation, advances in technology can augment a tried and tested system, providing a better experience for teachers and their students.

Bringing out the best

In a 2016 study sponsored by SMART Technologies, Filigree Consulting found that while excellent teaching is still the most important thing when it comes to positive student outcomes, when it's supplemented by good software and hardware (in that order), the results can be even more impressive.

According to the research, those using teaching best practice and technology together in the classroom reported achieving outstanding successes (38%) more frequently than their peers using just best practice but with low technology input (28%) or those using a lot of technology but not following best practice (20%).

At the recent Bett education technology show, Micro:bit Foundation's chief of education and strategy, Gareth James, lent credence to these results, stating that cutting edge digital tools will only succeed if they're in the hands of amenable teachers.

"Right from the very outset you need to have the correct tools, you need to have the teacher training in place and you need to have them willing to actually teach it," he explained. "You have to think about how it's going to progress from the point at which you're introducing it, whichever year group that is, and then spread it up and down the age groups effectively and potentially across the curriculum."

A key piece of hardware that can enable this balance between teaching excellence and technology is an interactive display. This takes the place of the traditional blackboard or whiteboard and provides greater continuity of learning for example, a teacher could create a quiz that's done during class using the display with all the pupils chipping in their answers from their mobile device while at their seat.

Filigree Consulting's report also cites findings from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which carried its own research into the use of technology in education in 2015. It found that while technology promotes collaboration and interaction among students and with their teacher, if it distracts from this a negative effect can be felt rather than a positive one.

Making the most of an investment

What the research from Filigree Consulting and the OECD shows is that successfully using technology in classrooms to achieve good outcomes for students isn't just about buying the shiniest piece of kit around.

Even if an institution has a lot of money to fling at bringing tech into the classroom and let's face it, most don't deciding what to buy and from whom is a delicate decision making process.

One of the priority considerations should be the fact that education is a highly specialised area, much like healthcare or finance. As such, technology for a learning environment needs to be tailored to meet this specialisation.

While some more generalist suppliers may have arms that deal with edtech, for critical classroom infrastructure whether that's an interactive whiteboard or software to support learning and teaching it's well worth turning to a specialist.

See more SMART Technologies customer stories here

One company well-versed in technology for education is SMART Technologies. For the past 30 years, it has been providing hardware, including its famous SMART Board, and software to enhance the experiences of teachers and their students.

As noted in the Filigree research, however, when it comes to technology in the classroom, software trumps hardware in terms of improving learning outcomes. SMART has wrapped up its various software offerings in what it calls the SMART Learning Suite. This comprises four pieces of specialised software: Notebook, lab, amp and response 2 - and an online solution as well, Learning Suite Online.

Notebook allows teachers to provide engaging, hands-on learning experiences from their work or home computer, with the ability to send them directly to their classroom's interactive whiteboard.

SMART lab, meanwhile, provides teachers with templates to create game-based activities, while response 2 allows them to create a quick quiz to ensure students have understood the lesson. SMART amp, on the other hand, is focused on collaboration, allowing the whole class to work together or smaller groups of children.

SMART is also sensitive to the fact schools don't have endless resources to pour into a total hardware refresh and will work on virtually any type of hardware, including Chromebooks and iPads.

One such school that has embraced SMART is Pinders Primary in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. With 80% of students speaking English as a second language, head teacher Lorna Kemplay and her deputy Craig Fraser needed to bring in technology that could facilitate visually engaging and lively lessons.

Working with consultants Elementary Technology, the school devised a five-year plan to invest in new SMART Board interactive displays, upgrade to SMART Notebook 17 software and commit to ongoing training.

"To have technology that we can see, the resolution of it is phenomenal, now we've got sound that erupts over the children, that has high definition to really capture them," Fraser said. "When you say software to support children's learning, you think of SMART. The differences from Notebook 11 to Notebook 17 is clearly a wide variety of resources through 3D images and class lab systems that allow it to be an engaging system."

Alongside the hardware and software upgrades, Pinders has implemented a third piece of the puzzle in the form of ongoing training an approach they call "triangulation". "You've got to have all three to get value for money," Kemplay explained. "Triangulation, that's really a central part of it and that's what we've had with SMART and Elementary Technology."

She added that Pinders' leadership is looking at SMART as a long-term investment, saying: "We have to get something that's going to have an impact and have longevity. It's a legacy for the future and for the children that come through Pinders Primary."

Budgets may be tight, but when it comes to making a technology investment in your school, choosing a tailored suite that's device agnostic, alongside the 21st century version of the stalwart blackboard, is one of the most sensible choices any institution can make.

SMART Technologies is transforming education discover more here.

Numerous studies have shown that parental involvement in a child's education can make a huge difference between mediocrity and excellence. Parents providing educational activities over the summer months give their kids a boost, so they return to school in the autumn more prepared to learn than children who were left to their own devices (quite literally, in many cases).

The greater the involvement level of parents with their children's school activities in general, from homework to extra-curricular events, the higher the children's level of achievement. Research by the University of Exeter argues that this is more important than the overall quality of the school attended. Increasingly, technology plays a key role in this involvement.

One school that's doing it's part to embrace digital change is the Waid Academy in Fife, Scotland. Waid enrolls just under 700 pupils and sits at the heart of a close-knit community. Sabrina Ferguson, depute head teacher at Waid, joined the school in 2016 with the remit to transform it into a technology-enhanced environment. This involved integrating with Glow, Scotland's digital learning platform, Microsoft Office, and developing training on interactive displays provided by SMART Technologies.

Ferguson's three-pronged approach not only consisted of educating teachers and pupils, but parents, too. "[We ran] a session for parents on what we're doing within the school, how we're enhancing digital literacy and how we're developing different skills for digital innovation," Ferguson explained. "And also we wanted to offer them an opportunity to speak to the police about COP (Child Online Protection), and how to keep children safe online, as a result of all of this new advanced technology here, but also the fact that the pupils are much more engaged with technology at home and within school."

Thanks to technology, what goes on in the classroom no longer stays entirely in the classroom. With cloud-based online systems, parents can check what homework their offspring have been set, keep tabs on their grades and projected performance, and even gain access to assignments should the child need help completing them.

Moreover, parents no longer need to worry about filing away their child's paper progress reports or notices from the school. Again, online systems can provide a historical record of these that is just a webpage URL and login away. But online systems also allow teachers to provide more regular updates on progress, not just the term-end (or even annual) reports that used to be the norm. A study from What Works Clearinghouse shows that more frequent feedback, in the form of daily report cards, has a positive impact on the behaviour of students with ADHD.

Of course, technology isn't a panacea on its own; it needs to be allied with good teaching practice. According to a 2015 OECD report, technology will merely improve results a little without better teaching practice, whereas best practice can achieve good results without technology. In fact, from the same study, some countries with low educational technology adoption scored the highest on literacy and numeracy. However, there are clear indications that good practice and appropriate technology together are more likely to provide the best results of all, making it essential that the two are combined.

A key component of technological assistance in the classroom itself is the display and presentation technology used by the teacher. Many teaching spaces now include a projector or wall-mounted display. But without the accompanying collaboration solution, this still promotes the traditional, non-interactive mode of presentation. In contrast, according to the OECD, most teachers now see their roles as facilitating students with their own learning journey, rather than imposing rote digestion of information.

Collaboration and interaction are key components for teaching kit that can truly amplify this facilitation. The aforementioned SMART Technologies, for example, provide interactive displays and collaborative software for education. The flagship 7000 series screen combines a digital whiteboard with pre-planned interactive lessons and web browsing, without the need for an attached computer, although it can accept multiple simultaneous inputs and switch between them easily via a preview screen. The touchscreen facility and SMART ink let multiple pen users draw and write on the screen as if it were a conventional whiteboard.

Of course, a pupil's relationship with technology does not start and end in school. As they move into employment and become parents themselves, they will be confronted by an evolving, tech-driven world. At the recent Bett education technology show, Micro:bit Foundation's chief of education and strategy, Gareth James, stressed the importance of equipping young people for this change. "Increasingly we are seeing more and more of the world relying on digital tools. People using digital tools in the workplace, people creating digital products," he said. "Therefore as we look forward into the 21st century, digital skills are vitally important to our young people to take advantage of the opportunities coming their way."

According to Ferguson, Waid's ambition has been to promote a wider understanding of technology's capabilities in education both inside and out of the classroom. "We're listening to pupils, and parents and teachers about what they need to help them become a bit more digitally literate," she said. "But also within an educational context, more specifically about supporting digital learning and digital literacy."

All this can be a lot for parents to get to grips with, particularly if their only memory of the classroom is blackboards and paper notebooks. But there's no question that technology can have a positive effect on how much children get out of education. What goes on at schools like the Waid Academy is no longer hidden in mystery. From keeping tabs on attendance, academic performance, and what your money is being spent on, to helping your kids with their homework, digital technology is making education much more transparent and easy for parents to be involved in.

SMART Technologies is transforming education discover more here.

There has always been a problem with teachers being from a different generation to their pupils, particularly older educators. But the dominance of digital technology has spread that generation gap even wider, as young people become conversant with mobile digital devices, games and social media that didn't exist when their teachers were growing up. Teachers now face pupils using devices and online systems that they don't use themselves, and don't really understand either. The generation gap is more prevalent than ever, but teachers can bridge that gap if they receive the right guidance with appropriate technology.

Speaking at the Bett education technology show in London, Professor Rose Luckin of University College London's EDUCATE project predicted that global technology trends will quickly change every workplace. "Teaching has its workplace, teachers have their workplace, so we need to think very quickly about how we prepare them for this," she said. "It's not just about how to use technology, it's about how to be a lifelong learner. It's about helping teachers to have the right mindset so they don't feel a failure because they haven't yet understood how to use technology."

Some schools and teachers have particular trouble grasping the role of social media and mobile devices in teenage life. They consider Facebook a threat and warn parents against it at parent-teacher evenings, without realising that preventing teenagers from using social media like this, or messaging apps such as Snapchat and Instagram, is nearly impossible. Online social media and network gaming are now such an integral part of teenage behaviour that any attempt to prise the mobile devices out of the hands of young people is likely to widen the generation gap rather than narrow it.

Teenagers have always felt themselves under pressure to keep up with their peers. Now this means owning the latest mobile devices and having a profile on the trending social and chat networks, as much as it means wearing the latest clothes and shoes. Fighting against this will be a losing battle, so it's much more important to look at how teaching can take the shift in youth culture on board rather than deny or discount it.

One school that is doing its part to embrace technological change is the Waid Academy in Fife, Scotland. In 2017, Waid moved to a new campus after spending 130 years at its previous home. This involved a huge digital overhaul, including the integration of Microsoft Office, Scotland's digital learning platform, Glow, and interactive display boards. Deputy head teacher Sabrina Ferguson admitted that a vital part of this change involved bringing the digital experiences students had outside of school into the classroom.

"I think because the pupils are advancing considerably with their technology use, we felt it was important to harness that progression that they have out of school," she said. "[It's] how we can use it effectively in school to help with teaching and learning. So it was really about trying to merge that gap to have a kind of digital speak' between teachers and pupils."

The generation gap in education isn't just between pupils and teachers it exists within the staffroom, too. A teaching career can span more than 40 years, and those towards the end of their working life will not have grown up with digital technology, whereas teaching staff in their 20s and 30s could well be "digital natives".

According to research company Statista, the largest proportion of Facebook users (13%) are in the 25-34 age range, and over a third are 44 and under. The demographics of the mobile-centric generation of systems such as Instagram and Snapchat are even younger, with 59% of Instagram users under 29, and 79% of Snapchat users under 34.

Keeping up with the latest online trend is like a dog chasing its tail; every time you think you've caught up, kids move on. However, it's not beneficial to get fixated on how young people are using social networks that are, in the case of Snapchat, hard for the older generation to understand. The key factor to consider is that today's school students now take for granted that a lot of their communication with their peers will be online, and predominantly using smartphones and other mobile devices. Young people expect their educational experience to be similarly interactive, and partially delivered via these kinds of devices.

This is why classroom technology needs to keep pace with the expectations of the pupils that it serves. Simply installing an audio-visual display is not enough; this needs to integrate with interactive learning systems so that it is not just a passive display tool. In fact, projectors and wall-mounted large-screen TVs can actually be less interactive than the blackboards and whiteboards that teachers have used for centuries, because teachers can't necessarily share ideas that weren't pre-prepared or derived during class.

This doesn't have to be the case, however. Digital classroom technology can combine the tried and tested tools of the past, with contemporary audio-visual presentation, alongside networked interaction and collaboration. SMART Technologies produces a variety of hardware and software solutions that integrate all these functions into one easy-to-use ecosystem.

The hardware part of the equation ranges from the entry-level 2000 series displays with built-in screen sharing for student devices, to the 6000 and 7000 series with digital whiteboard functionality, interactive activities and collaborative workspaces. The company also produces a SMART Learning Suite software that combines lesson delivery, assessment, student collaboration and game-based learning in one package. Instead of passive presentations, teachers can use the template-driven SMART lab to create engaging interactive activities in just a few minutes. SMART Notebook also lets a teacher create lessons at home and send them directly to the classroom's SMART Board.

The SMART amp collaborative tools allow students in desktop-based labs or with their own notebooks or tablets to work together on projects, and these projects can be displayed on the shared screen for the teacher to provide feedback and assistance. SMART amp even allows remote collaboration on projects. With SMART Response 2 assessment built in too, activities can be graded, and the results shared immediately with students and their parents.

See more SMART Technologies customer stories here

However, technology will not fix the generation gap on its own. Many schools and other educational establishments install complicated new classroom systems with an amazing array of capabilities, but fail to train their staff to use them effectively. A 2015 OECD study has shown that technology must be allied with good teaching practice to be effective, and that the two together can have a significantly positive impact on educational outcomes.

Furthermore, a TALIS report from 2013 revealed that teachers pinpoint ICT skills for teaching and new technologies in the workplace as second and third most important factors in professional development after teaching students with special needs. Younger teachers, who grew up with digital technology, may find it easier to get to grips with new interactive classroom systems than older staff who are in the latter decades of their careers. But the benefits available for student engagement and achievement are clear, making bridging the technological gap in education an absolute necessity for learning excellence.

However, it's worth noting that any digital journey will not have a fixed start and end point. Teachers need to be constantly learning in order to ready their students for the technology they will encounter after education. Scott Duncan, head of social subjects and religious education at Waid, said that "digital literacy" is vital to the school's plans going forward.

"We need to prepare our young people for a world that will fully embrace technology for jobs we don't yet know will exist," he said. "Part of the work we're doing here in school is to develop those digital literacy skills. Our staff are going through a programme of training and development at the moment to develop the understanding of what we mean by digital literacy. So it includes our young people's digital identity their skills and their ability to create, and we will in turn feed that back to our young people to prepare them to leave school."

SMART Technologies is transforming education discover more here.

Over the past 30 years, there's been a dramatic shift in attitudes towards technology and its ability to enhance learning experiences. Aside from playing games or watching movies on a parent's mobile device, the classroom is now often the first place a child meets technology, whether that be through the tools they use or the systems around them designed to create interactive experiences.

Today it's common for children to have access to personal mobile devices or laptop computers for use in school, often supported by online learning tools integrated into the school's network. It's a picture that as little as 15 years ago would have still seemed unfeasible, or even unattractive.

From the beginning of the 20th century the uptake of technology in the classroom was reserved for only the occasional breakthrough, with long bouts of status quo in between. In fact, the overhead projector, first invented in the 1930s but adopted more widely in schools and businesses in the 1950s, remained a popular way of displaying text on a wall or board right up to the turn of the century. Not only was it a great alternative to a blackboard, but it was a simple and effective way of allowing a teacher to quickly create content that could be re-used by colleagues.

This was the order of business for almost 50 years, with few technological breakthroughs finding their way to the classroom right away. The blackboard, both celebrated and loathed in equal measure, remained king until it was gradually ousted by whiteboards in the early 1990s, a technology that itself was some 30 years old. The pace of change was glacially slow, and while some innovations would find their way into schools, the classroom would remain largely isolated from evolving technology until the turn of the current century.

The rise of the personal computer and the World Wide Web sparked one of the most dramatic technological breakthroughs in history. Although it would take a few years before PCs were cheap enough for mass adoption, the "classroom computer" became common by the mid-1990s, particularly as the internet started to mature.

The personal computer transformed the way learning was delivered to children, and drastically increased the pace of change. Teachers could now not only direct pupils to online content they thought was useful, but they could create their own informative web pages and share them with their faculty. The sudden rise of CD-ROMs also made it possible to deliver more sophisticated educational applications, while the development of search engines like Google and Yahoo gave access to the largest shared database of information in the world, and the move to servers rather than local memory meant school work, software and admin records could be archived.

However, despite the new opportunities that technology was providing, the use of a computer in the classroom was largely considered a supplementary tool something that made things easier. Only relatively recently devices have become considered to be a fundamental part of a student's educational career with the possibility that learning can become entirely digitised.

In fact, things have moved so quickly that school leavers are now considered to be at a severe disadvantage in society if they've been unable to access technology from a young age, and with coding classes becoming more common in the curriculum, students are expected to leave school with skills that are alien to many adults.

That new push has meant schools are increasingly turning to technology to help deliver lessons. According to a study from technology charity Tablets for Schools, it's now thought that over 70% of all primary and secondary schools in the UK use tablet computers to deliver learning material, with over 10% being able to offer one tablet per pupil. Furthermore, a 2016 survey from RM Education found that up to 29% of secondary and 9% of primary schools are adopting bring your own device' policies that allow students to use their personal devices in the classroom.

One such school that has undergone huge technological change is the Waid Academy in Fife, Scotland. In 2017, Waid moved to a new campus after spending 130 years at its previous home. The school's senior technician John Ogilvie revealed that the old building had limited tech options, including data projectors and a reliance on desktop PCs. "We've had an upgrade of all IT in the school," he says. "In terms of desktops and laptops we're predominately now using mobile technology here. The number of desktops has reduced significantly."

Waid's head of social subjects and religious education, Scott Duncan, added that extending technology beyond the classroom has helped staff get to grips with new ways of teaching. "We have access to technology in every room," he says. "That really allows staff to engage in technology to become more confident with it and also enhance learning and teaching to make it more interactive for our young people who engage with technology on a day to day basis."

However, technology isn't going to provide an out-of-the-box teaching solution by itself it has to be merged with good teaching practices to truly work. A 2015 OECD report revealed that technology won't improve results without better teaching practice, whereas best practice will lead to good results without the use of any technology. The same study also found that some countries with low educational technology adoption scored the highest on literacy and numeracy. Despite this, there are clear signs that good practice and the right technology will produce the best results of all, making it vital that the two are combined well.

There are glimmers of hope in the industry, where companies are working to create products that are designed from the ground up to be classroom aides and address these shortcomings.

One example of this is the interactive display. Historically, the iconic blackboard was replaced by the more functional and easier to use whiteboard, helping to reshape how a teacher delivers a lesson. Now, interactive displays are helping to mix meaningful learning experiences with the functionality of an internet-enabled device.

See more SMART Technologies customer stories here

Interactive displays, provided by companies such as SMART Technologies, are helping to turn the classroom board into a collaborative hub. Unlike typical touchscreens, on panels like SMART's 7000 series interactive display, students can use pens, erasers and fingertips to work on the board simultaneously, creating the same opportunities for collaboration as you'd find on a traditional whiteboard. Android, iOS and Windows devices can also be synced so that each student can make personalised annotations on their machine, which are instantly displayed on the main board.

Ultimately, interactive displays offer an elegant solution to the problem of blind digitisation of the classroom. The display is where classroom technology comes together. SMART's iQ technology lets teachers switch from SMART Notebook lessons to whiteboard to game-based activities and more right at the board. The interactive display is the classroom technology hub for learning software, lesson content and student devices, and comes with a one-year subscription to SMART Learning Suite software.

Waid Academy's head teacher, Iain Hughes, said that SMART Boards sit at the heart of the school's bid to transform digitally. "It has been a journey, though, because not everybody's skilled right from the very beginning," he says. "You get the technology, but you need to make sure the staff are upskilled for that, and that's where we've had to plan for that. It's different ways of learning. We still have the traditional learning that goes on. We still have traditional assessments, things like that, but it's about looking at ways in which you can actually inspire youngsters."

SMART Technologies is transforming education discover more here.