Welcome to the Conference 

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Assessment Tomorrow had held ten annual conferences in Scotland looking at the issues involved in using technology in assessment and learning for a school and college based audience. Similarly MathSpeak was a series of annual national conferences, inaugurated in London in Autumn 2013, to an audience of senior maths teachers and school leaders examining recent developments and latest issues concerning the teaching and assessment of Mathematics and student engagement.  For 2017 we joined together to bring a theme of “Enhancing Mathematics teaching and assessment through the use of Technology” to Assessment Tomorrow’s 11th Scottish event in January 2017.

Working with SQA we looked at the practical issues of selecting, implementing and using e-Assessment, e-learning and related technologies and techniques. 

Scotland has been at the forefront of developing and implementing learning that is assessed using the latest IT and ICT techniques and technologies. The conference speakers, through a range of presentations and case studies, looked at opportunities for digitising the assessment process, new approaches to assessment and how technology can be used to help design more effective and reliable assessment.

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In the Mathematics arena we are seeing rapid changes in focus and support from National and Local government, significant challenges in managing staff and resources through that change, increasing demands or learners and other stakeholders, and the introduction and reliance on exciting new technology.  This is leading to an urgent need to bring the mathematics teaching community together to really understand and discuss these changes and examine how best to manage them.   What we presented at Assessment Tomorrow/MathSpeak is a mathematics conference that will appeal to teachers and school leaders and address their real day to day needs and pressures, taking Maths out of its comfort zone, and providing a vibrant, relevant and challenging agenda.

The conference speakers used their experience to highlight what they saw as the opportunities, looking at recent innovations and approaches in the use of technology and how these are now being adopted and developed by providers and by organisations such as SQA.