More, Different and Better

Guest post by Rob Wilmot – founding CTO of Freeserve, entrepreneur, investor and educator – who will be on the selection panel that decides which maths apps to fund and develop, as part of Maths4us.

I was rubbish at maths at school – I never got my head around times tables, fractions looked alien to me and I actually found it difficult to add and subtract. I ended up doing a science degree which required me to go through foundation level maths. I couldn’t hide any longer. It was so hard that there were times when I actually cried with frustration.

So I get it when I hear people say that maths scares them. It actually does. For some people struggling to work out what money to pay at a counter whilst people sigh and tut behind them can make them feel physically sick. This feeling of humiliation and worthlessness creates a spiral of decline which perversely creates a barrier of fear and stifles the desire to learn: ‘If I don’t try, I can’t fail.’

I’m fortunate to have been immersed in teaching and learning as chair of Doncaster College, where as one of the most deprived areas in the UK, we have a higher than average instance of the population with a lack of even the most basic numeracy skills.

It was at Doncaster College that I guided the board and executive teaching team to embrace and apply emerging technologies – particularly social media – to tell those without basic numeracy skills that we were here to help. With half of the UK population now on Facebook, social media is where people are most comfortable – so it’s a natural, non-hostile environment to encourage people back into learning.

As an entrepreneur and owner of marketing and communications business bcsagency.com I’m always looking to see how technology can be leveraged to help my clients reach their customers in order to sell more. And it’s not a stretch to see how using the same principles of user engagement can be applied to get users to ‘learn’ more.

For me, mobile is the big opportunity to re-engage the disenfranchised. Facebook announced last week that over 50% of usage is now through the mobile web and apps. This use of mobiles to surf the web or play Angry Birds has expanded to fill the gaps in people’s days: the big gaps such as on the bus into work, as well as the little gaps like waiting for the kettle to boil. What if we could fill these gaps with something useful?  What if we developed mobile apps to encourage people to learn at their own pace in bite sized chunks?  Any time, any place, anywhere.

Wouldn’t that add up?

Rob Wilmot was founding CTO of Freeserve in the late 1990s and one of the youngest executive officers of a FTSE 100 company, at the age 29. Rob exited Freeserve after the £1.6 billion trade sale to Wanadoo in 2001 and has remained at the forefront of the digital revolution ever since as an entrepreneur, investor and educator.

A regular speaker on entrepreneurialism, business, social media, digital marketing and the skills agenda, Rob also continues to invest in technology-based companies including bcsAgency. He is also a founder of crowdsourcing venture Crowdicity, a Social Innovation Management Tool used by clients such as Ofsted, Oxfam, and John Lewis partnership to increase efficiency, social inclusion and participation through collaborative thinking. Crowdicity has been named as one of the ‘Top 100 Open Innovation Companies in the World’ by NESTA and The Guardian. Rob is also a non-executive director of The Cabinet Office Government Procurement Service where he oversees the implementation of technology to improve business processes and increase savings for the nation.

Rob was made an honorary doctor of The University of Bradford in 2011 for his contribution to business and the internet and was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for his work in education, after leading the educational and financial recovery of Doncaster College.