Dr. Mary Kelly:

Yes, I totally agree. I think it will be increasingly important. If we are talking about an integrated curriculum, children will experience that sort of blended learning from a very young age and there is no reason why it should not happen at third level. Senator Dolan mentioned the arts. Music and film at the moment are all about virtual reality, augmented reality, technology and digital technologies. The film industry in Ireland is booming at the moment. It is a lot of technology that is driving that, so why would somebody who is studying an arts degree not be able to introduce and avail of that sort of technology? That is the kind of broader thinking that we will all have to embrace if we are really focused on driving STEM.

As I said, from the beginning, as a primary school teacher, you do not look at subjects in isolation, rather, you look at opportunities to bring in and develop technology across those. That needs to continue. There is something now called STEAM, which is STEM with the arts included, so we are seeing that.