The news earlier this week that an Academy school in Penzance, Cornwall, was giving away new iPads to their students set me thinking about the power of the technology and the way in which it continues to transform the education world.

Blackboards, and possibly even whiteboards too, are now being consigned to the dustbin of history as new ways of explaining, teaching and learning are found. The wealth of information, which is now available for young people at the click of a mouse, has the capacity to give them access to a seemingly infinite amount of data from a variety of different sources.

The sheer volume of online facts and figures, which are now available, means everything from the banal to the esoteric can be streamed into classrooms and households up and down the country. A recent report on plagiarism in higher education drew particular attention to the use of Wikipedia as a key source for that two-click solution of cut and paste when the topic gets tough. It's not out there somewhere; it is out there everywhere!

This opulence of facts and figures, data and information, and opinion and statistics means that it is now more important than ever that we all understand the importance of asking fundamental questions about what we read on the screen or find at the end of an RSS news alert. These are simple questions which have been central to education enquiry for decade; who wrote this and why?  What did they include and what did they leave out?  Is this just an opinion or is it founded in robust analyses of large samples? 

We need to have the tools to help us understand what the facts are and what the fictions are, what merely is an anecdote and what can be proven through further study and research.

The Government has committed itself to releasing more and more education data into the public domain. This is no bad thing; just as we should know how schools, colleges and universities are performing, we should have more information about the education system as a whole. However, we also need to make sure we understand the information that is out there; it is not just a series of statistical outpourings.

At Learning Plus UK we are committed to making complex analyses accessible by focusing on strategic education data and how it can help to drive improvement. Our tools, like the target setting software and our grade predictor, are statistically robust, using national data sets. This means schools and colleges can be sure they are setting the right targets to drive improvement. Come and see what you think at one of workshops in London, Birmingham and Liverpool. You can book a place by emailing the office at office@learningplusuk.org

In the end, it is not how much we know, but what we do with the knowledge that counts.  Those young people may have a lovely new iPad, but it'll be what they use the technology for that will really count.