This year there was a busy international presence, with visitors to Learner Voice coming from at least 20 different countries. Stephen Heppell gave an example of the impact of Learner Voice: "An international education minister visited Learner Voice. He informed us that last year he talked to some of the students of Lampton School about their thoughts on education. From the feedback he received from this group of learners, he has since changed one of his education policies to incorporate their ideas."

One of the highlights of the day for Josh, Georgia and Paige, Year 8 students at Lampton School, was the opportunity to interview the Minister for Education, Jim Knight. Josh said: "We asked the Minister Jim Knight to discuss the changes he would like to make to education and how he would make them. We told him that we would like to use more exciting technologies and be able to use lots of different technologies in our work, all at the same time."

Georgia, a Year 8 student at Lampton School added: "Working on Learner Voice at BETT has really made me think about the schools of the future, and what our children's schools will be like. We may not have a need for pens or paper one day."

Juliette, a Year 8 teacher at Lampton School commented: "Our students have been working on a project to assess the teacher perspectives of learner opinions. The class has asked learners from around the world questions about what they think about education and school life, and how they think it will change in the future. The students posed those same questions to teachers and to various ministers including Jim Knight and asked them to guess how students responded.

"Interestingly, the majority of the teachers our students interviewed believed that learners are challenged in the classroom. However, in the home environment students learn to multi-task using various technologies, students feel this same practice is not supported in the learning environment."

Links:
The sponsors of this feature were: ConnectEd, LP+, Promethean and RM.

BETT 2009
Put the dates in your diary now for BETT 2009 - 14-17 January 2009, London Olympia.

Other Emap Education Events:
Be sure to register for free now for The Education Show, the UK's largest educational resources showcase. Taking place from 28 February to 1 March, find out more information at Education-Show.com