Technology companies and teachers – what problem is your product solving?

Even though ICT and digital technology have been on the agenda in education since the first BBC Micro rolled off the production line in 1981, a debate continues in which the signal is often lost in the noise. New products, ideas and initiatives come and go but as a profession we still seem undecided on a fundamental point: how, if at all, can technology be used to benefit teaching and learning? Too often the debate is polarised – evangelist versus sceptic – complicated by issues of funding (lack of), spending (too high or low) and training (never enough). Despite the launch of the BBC Micro being almost 40 years ago, we still seem to be going over the same ground. Explicitly focused on the education market from the start, the BBC Micro was part of the ambitious BBC Computer Literacy Project (BBC, 2018). Digital literacy seems as pressing now as it was in the recession of the early 1980s, informed by the anxieties of our own decade about knowledge, skills and how best to equip ou