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Around 30,000 visitors and 700 exhibitors later, the stands are packed up and another successful year of BETT is being celebrated. So what did this year’s BETT hold for the visitor?
As ever, the exhibitors at BETT 2010 were of a superb quality. Every year the innovation that suppliers offer continues to grow, and fascinating new technologies to support educators reaches new heights.
With the show now passed, teachers are packed to the brim with thought provoking ideas to offer the classroom, leaders are reflecting upon all that was seen, contemplating their next potential purchase. So, let’s take a look at what was hot at BETT 2010.
Engaging parents
Parental engagement was a key topic at BETT 2010, with Groupcall on hand to talk to visitors about various ways that communication between parent and school can be enhanced. Its parental communication system, ‘Groupcall Messenger’, which is used by over 2,000 schools throughout the UK and Europe, helps to reduce unauthorised absences and improve parental engagement, was regularly demonstrated to visitors and proved popular. On Thursday, Sir Bob Geldof discussed the issue of parental engagement and how he established Groupcall to help schools stay in touch with families.
Also of interest to those looking for parental engagement tools was exhibitor Synetrix. Online reporting is a key driver in allowing parents to have a meaningful dialogue with both their child and the school. Demonstrated by i2Q was, ‘OpenHive’, a tool which enables schools to provide parents with the opportunity to become involved in their child’s learning, to positively affect confidence and self-esteem, and to help raise levels of achievement. OpenHive is not just about reporting to parents and carers but engaging them in school life and creating a 3-way partnership which is informative, constructive, interactively engaging, secure and in real time.
Teaching tools
In terms of teaching tools, Onfinity’s ‘CM2 Max’ caused quite a stir. This fully featured interactive whiteboard system transforms any flat surface, such as a wall or table into an interactive whiteboard. The CM2 Max requires no signal receiver or device to be attached onto the surface making it fully portable between classrooms.
GCSEPod were on stand, getting pupils motivated about their education by providing the growing number of iPod and MP3 player users in the UK with the tools to create their very own virtual learning environment for examination success. It offers downloadable podcasts for Year 10 and 11 students, allowing access to a wide range of audio-visual content to assist learners in digesting and storing information in a more relatable digital format. Following unprecedented success during the last academic year, the team at GCSEPod significantly extended the product range from an initial 30 to just over 300 titles, covering eight GCSE subjects.
Espresso Education introduced the ‘embed code’ feature for both Espresso Primary and Channel 4 Learning’s Clipbank. This feature enables subscribing teachers and pupils to display and play video easily and directly in the UK’s most popular learning platforms. In addition to supporting schools in achieving best value from their learning platform investment, this service enhancement also further strengthens “anywhere, anytime access” by providing pupils and students with extended learning opportunities. Clipbank also launched its new ICT and RE subject libraries on stand, with music to be added to the service in spring 2010.
A new exhibitor to BETT 2010 was the US leading educational search tool, netTrekker. netTrekker demonstrated their cross curricular content tool which is now aligned to the English curriculum and allows students and teachers to find safe, educator-selected digital resources, tightly aligned to government recommendations.
Launches
School Website, provider of website and prospectus design, launched its brand new interactive digital page turning prospectus at the 2010 show. Using new digital page turning technology this innovative style of prospectus takes viewers on an interactive journey to give prospective parents and pupils a real feel for the school.
One of the big names at BETT 2010 was Microsoft, who hosted a range of exciting new products. Visitors were able to meet the early adopters and partners of these technologies and to talk about their experiences first hand. BETT also offered a first chance for visitors to find out about the Windows 7 beta programme. Microsoft also demonstrated ‘Semblio’, at the show, a developer and assembly tool to be released with Office 2010. Microsoft Semblio can be used to create rich, immersive multimedia learning materials that are highly interactive and foster exploratory learning that teachers can customise, and that promotes collaboration. BETT 2010 was the first time the public were able to hear about the learning tool in practice.
Dell was also making waves at BETT 2010 by demonstrating the ‘Connected Classroom’. A purpose-built ICT solution for education, the Connected Classroom is a set of integrated capabilities that include Virtual Classrooms, Remote User Access and SIF Integration within Dell’s Connected Learning Journeys. The fundamental core values of the solution encourage learners to connect, collaborate and learn via active engagement with technology. Unlike traditional classroom settings, students are connected not just to the wealth of content within a www-enabled platform, but with interactive technologies, teachers and each other, going beyond the confounds of their physical environment to connect with a world of learning opportunities that exist in a digital age.
Games-based learning
Within the exciting new central feature, Playful Learning, games-based learning played a strong role at BETT 2010. Primary and secondary learners were giving live on-stand demonstrations to show teachers just how much fun learning can be. Through interactive sessions with students, Google demonstrated how Google Search, Earth and YouTube can help to bring the world into the classroom and assist students to find up-to-date information that isn’t available in text books. Mangahigh the curriculum-compliant maths games site for secondary school aged students, put visitors skills to the ultimate test in Mangahigh.com’s thrilling Pyramid Panic face-off. Two teams, including some of the young people on stand, competed to be crowned BETT 2010’s Mangahigh.com Masters Of Maths.
Seminar and CPD highlights
It’s not just exhibitors that BETT attendees flocked to see – many visitors come to the show to access the seemingly unending continuous professional development opportunities. This year’s seminar programme covered everything, right from Early Years to HE/FE, and sought to bring together the wealth of information and share experience from practitioners, industry and educational experts. Aside from the packed main seminar programme, BETT 2010 also featured sessions in the training theatre, along with software presentation theatre sessions, a free-to-attend and diverse government-led presentation programme in the Supporting Next Generation Learning area and free Future Learning Spaces seminars. A big hit this year included TeachMeet, an informal gathering of educationalists eager to share ideas and experiences, led by teachers.
The BETT TeachMeet Takeover, brand new to BETT 2010, involved numerous exhibitors handing over the reins of their stand to teachers to host TeachMeet slots. Completely led by visitors, TeachMeet Takeover gave teachers plenty of opportunities to get together and give informal presentations on quality ideas for free.
On the opening day of BETT, there were plenty of exciting seminars taking place. One of the first to open to show, Sally McKeown, a renowned consultant and journalist in the field of special educational needs, presented ‘Reading for Pleasure, Technology and the Future of Literacy’. The seminar explored the effects of technology on reading in children, along with accessibility in a modern world.
Over in the Keynote Theatre, BESA’s annual keynote speech was this year chaired by Merlin John, who hosted an educational debate with panellists including BETT Award winner Prof. Stephen Heppell, Prof. Angela McFarlane, award-winning teacher, Tim Rylands and RM’s CEO, Terry Sweeney. The debate proved a success, with participants and attendees taking part in thought provoking and often heated discussions about a number of educational topics affecting today’s schools.
On Thursday, Ben Williamson of Futurelab took to the stage in the Solutions Theatre to discuss ‘Institutional Innovation: The curriculum, subject knowledge, skills, and children’s cultures’, which discussed ways in which schools could make their approach to teaching the curriculum more innovative.
An issue that has been high on the agenda for both secondary schools and colleges is the 14-19 Agenda and the roll out of Diplomas. Colin Money, of Kingswood Partnership, discussed the challenges his consortium faced during the implementation of the Diploma, and how they overcame any operational issues such as monitoring students across several locations.
On Friday, Nick Shacklock from Becta presented a seminar entitled ‘Home Access – exciting opportunities for teaching and learning,’ which gave an update on the Home Access programme to provide all learners with home access to computers and the internet, launched at BETT 2008.
The Keynote Theatre was overtaken by teachers on Friday afternoon, as TeachMeet returned to the show to provide the ultimate platform for teachers to get together and discuss issues affecting them, share ideas and brainstorm creative approaches in the classroom. This year saw well over 100 teachers attend the TeachMeet session, with plenty of discussion and short presentations taking place.
Saturday also featured plenty of CPD opportunities for BETT exhibitors taking advantage of a weekend visit to the show. In the Solutions Theatre, Dan Buckley of Cambridge Education talked about teamwork, and talked about how schools can promote more harmonious and effective team work amongst young people.
It wasn’t just the BETT main seminar programme that offered training for visitors; free presentations took place on numerous feature areas around the show. On ‘Future Learning Spaces’, a feature area dedicated to showcasing learning environments being developed though school renewal programmes such as, Building Schools for the Future and the Primary Capital Programme. A specific presentation area held many free talks for visitors. Lead by Partnerships for Schools, presentations were held by sponsors involved in the FLS area, such as Sony, who talked about media and learning, and Ramesys, who explored the topic ‘Future Learning, What should it mean? How far have we come?’
In the ‘Supporting Next Generation Learning’ area, which included nine main government departments and agencies, visitors partook in regular presentations by both experts and practitioners to highlight some of the policy and curriculum changes to education in recent years, along with advice and best practice tips to improve standards.
So BETT might be over for another year, and no doubt plenty of UK and international visitors and exhibitors came away with plenty of new ideas, new connections and hopefully new inspiration to take back to classrooms the world over. BETT makes a return 12-15 January 2011, so lock in next year’s show into your calendar now. |
