Last week I attended the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai as a guest of the Varkey Foundation. I spent the first two days with the Varkey Teacher Ambassadors, connecting, reconnecting, and thinking. I especially enjoyed catching up with the four other Aussie educators attending and discussing activism, teaching for the future, anti-extremism, tall poppy syndrome, and the status of teaching. We were all very proud of Yasodai Selvakumaran who made it to the top ten of the Global Teacher Prize this year. I also met Thuy Tran from Vietnam, who I was mentoring.

Ten year-old Braydon Bent was the master of ceremonies at the opening plenary. He opened with, “I’m here to remind you it’s my world too. Once this stage is packed away, my generation will be left behind to deal with the mess, so let’s try harder.” I presented on a panel about tolerance and co-existence with Marj Brown and Andrew Moffat, and I met with HRH Prince Edward to discuss my experiences in the Duke of Edinburgh Award. It was also nice to catch up with an old friend from my teens and twenties as Hugh Jackman announced the 2019 Global Teacher Prize (check out the shout-out I get at 15.00).

The conference was a mix of teachers, policymakers (Tony Blair and Al Gore were present) and edtech. Edtech is making big inroads into Africa and I attended an interesting presentation showing how artificial intelligence can now provide teachers with real-time feedback on classroom interactions, like where they direct questions to and the directional focus of each student. I also attended a great panel about 21st century skills and was struck by the point that all of these skills are addressed in co-curricular activities and this may be the most important area for schools to focus on in the future.