H4cked Off: Has Michael Gove learned his lesson?

The education secretary's not everybody's favourite, but he's starting to make the right noises in IT at least

Michael Gove may be one of the most reviled figures in British political history; or so it's felt this week.

Firing Ofsted chief Baroness Sally Morgan, then suggesting 10-hour school days seem to have cemented the education secretary's dodgy reputation with "the left".

But, weirdly, from an IT-focused perspective, it's beginning to look like Gove may actually be starting to demonstrate a greater understanding of the wider needs of his national curriculum IT reform.

I attended the BETT conference in London a few weeks back, and chatting off (and occasionally on) the record with several educators, the overriding message seemed to be: "We don't like him, but we're rising to the demands of his impending curriculum, and it's actually beginning to help our educational process across the board."

Part of the advantage teachers seem to be experiencing is, when buying into IT initially to try and shape up for the Computing curriculum, they're starting to disover that extra devices, robust networking infrastructure and a focus on finding teachers or other techies with the knowledge to impart wisdom and ideas to students is helping across the board. When headteachers, subject teachers and support staff come together through IT solutions, they're seeing benefits for education that aren't just about using computers in the traditional way.

The section of the argument that's been rattling bones since Gove's original announcement of revision two years ago seems to be sorting itself out in this way.

Ian Livingstone, who wrote the original NESTA report upon which many of the curriculum reforms are based, pleaded for schools to consider the use of IT to access so-called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) when he appeared on a discussion panel I chaired last year.

Whereas a year back, many teachers I spoke to had never even heard of them, they now seem to at least know what a MOOC is, with many already embracing such output from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others, and actually fitting them into a school week as a standard feature.

But a voice that the likes of Miles Berry, ex-chairman of Naace, a national association that promotes learning in IT, and outspoken SET founder Bob Harrison, felt was always missing from the discussion of IT in education was that of Gove himself.

"Code, code, code," he'd always say, while neglecting the counter-argument that, to paraphrase Harrison, not everybody's going to be the next Alan Turing.

Gove's BETT speech this year started to hint that, finally, he's stopped banging the drum of teaching five-year-olds to bug test, and has started to embrace the wider discussion. Perhaps he knew all along, and just felt the need to hammer home something blunt and effective that Daily Mail readers everywhere could get hold of.

Or perhaps he's finally listened to advice. But talking about MOOCs, 3D printing, Instagram and even - oo-er - the saucy world of SnapChat, is a definite move in the right direction.

But it gets better. As announced at BETT by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock (a name you may become familiar with if Gove continues to lose popularity), the newly-formed Education Technology Action Group (let's call it ETAG) did indeed meet in early February as planned.

H4cked Off: Has Michael Gove learned his lesson?

The education secretary's not everybody's favourite, but he's starting to make the right noises in IT at least

Chaired by professor of new media environments at the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice - a leading advocate of ICT in learning - and attended by the likes of the Institute of Education's Diana Laurillard and the Open University's Peter Twining, this group could be a little bit like The Avengers of ed tech, although with an Iron Man less into Oracle and more into open-source, community learning projects.

From what I understand, it all went down very well indeed.

Gove actually showed up, which surprised some people to begin with. I understand he was eloquent, believable and talked of how when the coalition came to power, they needed to roll back state intervention, and wanted the government simply to do little harm. They didn't think the education sector was a smart consumer of technology, he said, and placed too much emphasis on hardware.

They were particularly concerned with the rapidity of obsolescence in hardware utilised by the public sector. He wanted the government to get out of the way, and empower headteachers.

But, he said, they now recognise that simply getting out of the way may not be enough. It seems he sees government now as having a convening role in order to create the right circumstances for change and development.

Gove is now looking to remove those factors that hinder innovation by teachers.

I can't quote directly, because I wasn't there, but it's heartening to hear that Gove now believes that balancing freedom, guidance and - most importantly - collaboration is the way forward for fixing the mess that our ICT education system has been for, certainly, my entire lifetime.

I'll continue fighting the fight and spreading the word for skills development at all stages of life and across all departments and sectors here on Computing, but it's great news that "Gove" may be about to become a slightly less dirty word in the industry.

It's been a long time coming.