Smart Technologies: Calgary, Edmonton, Banff, March 2025

 

It was a great opportunity to be a guest, enjoy Canadian hospitality and share insights on blended learning and active classrooms with Smart Technologies. It was good too to share the experience and learn from an informed squad of Scottish Educators.  This post will reflect on what I learned from Smart and what I learned from my colleagues and some things I will follow up on.

It was a privilege to meet the Smart Technologies team and tour their operations in Calgary. The term “smart board” has become synonymous with interactive panels globally and in terms of product development they are still top of the class and deserve to be the generic name for interactive panels. 

However, in large tech exhibitions like BETT, where many screens and competitors are showcased, this can be lost and there still can be a general scepticism from the educational technology community about interactive boards and their impact on learning and teaching. This scepticism is often related to whether such panels support outdated models of learning if all learners and teachers have individual devices.

It's important to reassess this role, as interactive panels are crucial in learning spaces, facilitating blended learning and fostering collaboration and new approaches to learning and teaching. It was good to hear how the panels are used in new ways across schools in Scotland from the delegates and great too to visit the Edmonton School district to hear how smart boards are deployed and used across the district. It was great to meet and hear from real teachers on how they used their smartboards and associated software. It was interesting too to hear they had moved to Smart Boards from Epson data projectors.

Key takeaways include:

• Smart Technologies demonstrates a profound understanding of pedagogy and the role of their interactive panels in supporting active and blended learning.
• Their products are sustainable, reliable, and robust, as observed in the product development process.
• The software notebook is easy to use and Lumio supports a range of interactive activities.
•  It is easy for teachers to have multiple windows and applications open and to move across these and autosave they or the students’ annotations with smart ink
• Lumio offers great tools for whole class activities that learners can engage with from their own devices and/or on the smartboard.
• Credit to Smart they do a lot to track globally the digital landscape in education. It is worth accessing their free bench marking tool. (See how our group did below)
• They do some exemplary work too around neurodiversity and learning. 
• IT teams will like new easier ways to manage an estate of SmartBoards. 

I had several questions and challenges, which were all addressed. 

Smart Technologies excels in sustainability and performance metrics, and they now offer plugins like the AM60 to update older panels and give them longer operational lives. The panels integrate well with OneDrive, Google Apps, and virtual learning environments like Canvas , D2L and Moodle.

With multi-point touch capabilities, learners can engage in collaborative activities, making it easy and accessible for both teachers and students.

Hearing about the impact of Smart Boards in Midlothian, combined with the rollout of Chromebooks to all learners, was impressive and very similar to what we saw in action in Edmonton schools.

Unlike other panels that require being on the same network for full feature use, Smart Technologies has solved this securely. They demonstrated effective screen sharing and shared activities, allowing users to bring their own devices. I’ve battled that challenge in the past, for lots of security reasons IT teams don’t like unmanaged devices coming on to their networks.

While I initially thought from a college perspective, innovations like pre-programmed MFC chipped objects showed clear applications for primary and secondary classrooms. These could also fit into college delivery with some adjustments.

Their new interactive podium is ideal for lecture theatres or hybrid teaching, and the range of upcoming developments embracing Android 15, were very impressive and if I was still in a College I would be getting colleagues to check out Lumio as a potential improvement on Kahoot and some of the other solutions we have in the class activity space. I’d be exploring  purchase of an interactive podium for our theatre too.

My takeaways from Scottish presenters: Meeting the next generation of educational innovators was inspiring. Mid Lothian shared a story on inclusive digital transformation using Chromebooks and smartboards, while others discussed Smartboards with learner’s own devices, open learning initiatives, curriculum innovations for all school years, and VR headsets to understand neurodiversity. Collectively they are seeking solutions for digital credentials and better community support in educational technology and curriculum development. These concerns echo current uncertainties at Education Scotland and SQA.

The Gangs All Here

I plan to introduce them to the Association of Learning Technology. This post can't reflect all the fun we had in what is an anxious time in Canada. Perhaps never a better time to do business there. Smartboards and their associated product range are all available on relevant Scottish procurement frameworks and there are experienced channel partners and installers available. 

I have to include one image of the breath taking Rockies. Last time I was in Canada was 30 years ago on the east coast on a Rugby Tour - so first time seeing the mountains - truly awesome. 

Co-creating open solutions through interdisciplinary collaboration for the future of education

It was a pleasure to attend the Open Solutions Workshop in Bilbao as a guest of #UNESCO and the University of Monterrey.

The eProjects Bootcamp is an initiative that focused on equipping participants with the skills and knowledge needed to develop and implement innovative projects using technology. 

I am now working on a global education project around applications of the open badges framework. A number of the other projects have a focus on AI and teachers and learner skills and around Open Educational Resources. 

It was great to work with focused colleagues from around the world and have a little time to see around Bilbao and enjoy Spanish hospitality. 

In due course I will be in touch with relevant institutions and agencies in UK who will benefit from working with this collaborative. 

It was well run, very focused, and a challenging couple of days.  It was good to work with teams who were technically able and prepared to hit the ground running. We made full use of the tools that were available to us including https://grantedai.com/  

Turkish Vocational Qualifications Authority Exchange Ankara

It was an amazing privilege to be invited to make two presentations, chair and  participate in a series of workshops in Ankara following catching up with the Turkish delegation in Scotland some seven months ago.

I was on familiar ground around talking occupational standards, national awarding , accreditation, credit and levelling and quality control at national and centre level, but my talk was about how centres can use technology to support innovative delivery  and personalised assessments which is my current day job, reflecting the work of our team. 

I know we as a centre can support centres and training staff in Turkey to innovate their practice. I hope a partnership can grow around that. 

Interesting opportunities too with a large centre in France for learner and staff exchange and with a centre in Italy keen to figure out portfolios, microcredentials and digital badging with us. I'll take these back to our international team. 

It was great to hear the progress that has been made in Turkey where they have broadly adopted the Scottish Vocational system. Like many other countries. Unit based awards with clear approval criteria for centres and a sensible sampling quality assurance process is a sensible option. Well done SQA who were along to support event and great to catch up with Roderic Gillespie and Donald Paterson two former SQA colleagues supporting the developments in Turkey. Well done too to the SCQF partnership who were truly european trail blazers around setting up a national qualifications framework. 

We visited a really well equipped training centre and sampled their processes. These would be familiar to any training centre or College in Scotland. One thing stood out, when assessing candidates on solar panel installation or working at height on powerlines, all of the practical assessments are videoed as evidence and kept for later sampling. At moment evidence is required to be kept for 100 years. In Scotland we just need to hold evidence for around 12 months, though we do keep records of resulting for 3 - 5 years.

It was good to hear too the progress that has been made in France, Italy and Germany who made presentations on their own systems. 

All have clear employer levies that support employers and trainees. France and Italy have perhaps the most flexible system to support employers and employees upgrade their skills.  Germany is looking to modernise their established system - the delegates knew that many countries look at their system as leading.  It was interesting to hear them describe their own system as like Sputnik - a world first but now in need of upgrading. Their system is creaking a bit in terms of it ability to innovate and on the ground they are having challenges around recruiting and retaining assessors. 

My own reflections - 

• I think we need clearer line of sight in Scotland between the employer levy and where money is then committed to the vocational system. It is clear that is an essential element of a successful vocational system. 
• Ankara is a modern metropolis of 6 million people, it's very cold in winter - but with warm friendly people and amazing food. Turkey has a population of 84 million. 
• I've encountered the massive success of Scottish vocational system all around the world. It is easy to forget for a tiny country, we have always hit well above our weight on educational exporting, developing global thinking not at institutional but at national level, this around our vocational system - not school assessments nor the Scottish University system. I am still concerned this will be seriously disrupted or even lost when reforms come to SQA. 
• Other countries are making strong progress around digital certification. In Turkey you can request your certificate in any major language. 
• It was great to meet again colleagues from the European Training Foundation and from GOPA  and great to hear that expat Glaswegians in their ranks  follow my wee brother's Lost Glasgow Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Here in full flow speaking and chairing and  presentation linked to this blog post.  The work here is a reflection of work across the Learning and Teaching Academy at City of Glasgow College. I'm taking some Turkish delight back to my team. 

 

Talking about Artificial Intelligence @Edutech23 #Edutech23 Amsterdam

I was very fortunate to be a guest speaker at EduTech23 in Amsterdam earlier this month. Candidly without sponsorship I'd have been unable to attend.  Colleges in Scotland are in a precarious financial position currently and staff from vocational colleges don't normally have funding to engage in forums like this. But it is critical that we have a voice - so special thanks to the organisers. 

Artificial Intelligence is not as big a threat to vocational education as perhaps it is to the school and university system. 

Why ?  because in the main we offer authentic assessments.  Learners have to demonstrate they can do something not simply write an essay about how they might do it. That is not to downplay any ethical or other issues.

I really enjoyed #Edutech23 and my session attracted a standing room only audience and some very positive feedback on the day and online following the conference. Links to the session slides and what we are actually doing at the College are below.  I was suited a booted most of time but kilt and creative commons t-shirt on for day of session. 

I plugged too all the good work that is happening across the sector in Scotland and from UK in the AI space. 

The conference was well organised and well curated with an excellent set of sessions and was at a scale that encouraged attendees , exhibitors and presenters to engage.  I made some really good new contacts and reconnected with some colleagues from other roles I have held.  

I am just about to follow up with the useful contacts I made over the two days on the conference. Having returned to busy day job. 

Just to reiterate and before my new contacts flood my inbox with requests for sales meetings  at the moment I am always open to ideas and partnerships but we don't have resources to buy new services now or into the near future. I lead a resourceful team and there is a lot we can achieve without hard cash. We are well equipped for blended learning. Probably worth resharing how to work with Colleges in Scotland too,

We have suite that we are content with comprising at it's heart the tools listed below. These provide a sound platform for staff and students to enjoy a blended learning experience. 

• Canvas by Instructure , Canvas Credentials and Canvas Folio
• Microsoft Teams etc
• Click-View
• Panopto
• Turnitin
• Blackboard Ally 
• Padlet 
• Thinglink 
• OneFile portfolio for apprenticeships

1. Most immediately I am interested in any European College interested in working around with  Canvas Commons sharing vocational learning materials. 
2. Projects around staff and student digital teaching skills and digital literacy.
3. Policy around open educational resources at College level and the use of Artificial Intelligence in learning, teaching and assessment.

I'll follow up with post on some of the great folks I met and what we will follow up on. 

Turkish Delegation

Nice to meet and give Turkish Govt vocational delegation tour of City of Glasgow College and chat about the technologies we use to support learners. Technical chat too about SCQF and Articulation routes and what works and what still does not work in Scotland.

Turkey has just created a national qualifications and credit framework and now trying to get all institutions to implement this. 

Well done SQA for supporting this critical international work. I'm sure rest of programme will go well.

Among other things we visited College TV studio -  no sound ;-) 

 

UNESCO is drafting an Open Educational Resources #OER Recommendation. Work from Ljubljana #openscot #Unesco

UNESCO is drafting an Open Educational Resources (OER) Recommendation.

When I have a moment with my #openscot hat on I'm taking this back around the Scottish agencies who still don't get open education .
I hope we get some more engagement in this - for sake of learners and Scottish Education we need a proper cross sectoral policy position on this . Good to see ALT pulling together a UK Response  This is a useful vehicle for folks who want to make an individual or an institutional response.

This is an official UNESCO instrument that will both advise national governments on how to support open education in their countries and report on those efforts.

The draft Recommendation text has been prepared by a group of open education experts from UNESCO, researchers and practitioners from all world regions. The OER Recommendation builds on the Ljubljana OER Action Plan, a product of the 2nd World OER Congress.

The online consultation process is now open. This is an invitation to contribute to the draft. In addition to providing your own comments, please share this opportunity through your networks.

The text is available in English and French:

https://www.oercongress.org/unesco-oer-recommendation

https://www.oercongress.org/fr/recommandation-sur-les-rel


The deadline for submission of contributions is: 1 June, 2018.
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