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At the same time new software will encourage people to become much more creative and less pas- sive. Digital technology lowers the entry barriers to the world of media creation. Tools, just like bandwidth, are getting cheaper.
A recent celebrated example is a short film, 405 The Movie, in which a jumbo jet lands on a man’s car as he drives home on the freeway. The movie features totally convincing special effects and a full stereo soundtrack. 405 is the number of the highway, which, in this fiction, was cleared to land a jumbo jet in an emer- gency. It looks like it cost a million dollars, but it was made on a cou- ple of laptops for only 11,000 dol- lars. Today a high quality version can be downloaded on line slow- ly, but in the impending broad- band world people will send such movies to each other instantly.
When every home has a digi- tal camera linked to a set-top box and easy to use editing software, students will be able to deliver their ‘essays’ as short films express- ing their personal points of view.
In due course the ‘Online Film School’ which the NFTS in London is establishing (in partnership with film schools in Australia, India and the USA) will come into its own.
And the range of experience and information available to every child and adult in the world will be so vast that the most impor- tant role for teachers may be to help students think for themselves as they explore these worlds.
In addition, more and more sophisticated artificial intelli- gence, which will be built into software locally or in central servers, will respond to individuals’ needs, histories, abilities and learning styles in a way that few teachers can do today.
Education is and always has been about much more than being able to win Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The creative industries are already becoming the most important key to the success of our economy.
For example, the develop- ment of computer games and other software already brings more revenue to Scotland than North Sea oil. Knowledge of facts is not what employers in these industries need.
They will be looking for cre- ative thinking skills; and the ability to communicate, to work in teams, to make unexpected con- nections between disciplines, to be motivated and to enjoy the creative process – just those
things which the right kind of online interactive learning servic- es and software can enhance, and which the media business has always needed.
A huge global market for learning will open up in the broadband era. In this new world learners, not teachers, will come first and they will control the experience for themselves. But I also believe that, if teachers embrace the best of the new technology, they can also become even more effective.
They will be able to link their students with experts from all over the world, motivate them with entertaining software, and they will have the equipment to deliv- er precisely the individual experi- ences, which students need to stretch them to their limits.
At NESTA Futurelab in Bristol we hope to use all the powers I have described to enhance learning and to help currently excluded groups become involved in our democracy. We are doing research, not about technology, but modelling what people will actually really want to do in the coming broadband era.
Creative blue-sky research is vitally needed, providing space for unexpected ideas about con-
tent and human interaction. Then, as Lord Puttnam says, we could all begin to create the ‘Hollywood of education’.
But this particular ‘Hollywood’, and all the other creative agen- cies yet to be born in the interac- tive world, will only come into being if people in movies, com- puting, telecommunications and television really do come together and accept that we are all part of one, interactive, media industry.
With David Puttnam, Martin Freeth founded BAFTA's Interactive Entertainment Awards five years ago. After a long career with the BBC, he switched gears and went to work for NESTA – Britain's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. He has recently become Chief Executive of NESTA's Futurelab in Bristol.
This year's BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards will take place at the Grosvenor House on Thursday, October 10.
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