What will data and communication look like in the future?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Information Technology and Engineering.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of the University of Oxford’s Information and Network Science Lab. Head up by Professor Justin Coon, the lab at novel ways of approaching communication and data.

• The researchers in Justin’s lab come from a variety of mathematics, physics, and engineering backgrounds. This resource also contains interviews with Justin and Tanmayee Deshprabhu, a PhD student in Justin’s lab . If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. Justin and Tanmayee will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the lab’s research, and tasks them to think about how communications may evolve in the future.

• The animation summarises the key points in Justin’s article and can be used as a standalone resource (with the script) or together with the article and activity sheet.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!