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doug woods

ICT in Education Consultant and Trainer

Archive for the ‘BETT’ Category

BETT 2010

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Photo from the Microsoft stand at BETT
Image by stevebeard73 via Flickr

Tomorrow, all being well, I shall be travelling to London for the annual BETT exhibition at Olympia. This show is a ‘must’ event for people involved in ICT and education

I have attended most of the BETT shows ever since they started way back in the days of the BBC micro. I have generally found the show seems to vary each year. For me it seems that every other year the show is a good one with lots of innovation on display. Other years you tend to find just consolidation or new products. Note that a new product does not always = innovation.

Last year was an interesting show for me as I spent it meeting people and attending seminars rather more than visiting the stands. I wonder therefore if I missed anything but there did not seem to be any great innovations apart from touch sensitive desks.

Talking of touch sensitive desks, such as Microsoft surface, I wonder what had happened to them? Not much has been heard of them after BETT, did they due a death, were they simply too expensive, too impractical or has someone realised that we tend not to use desks so much in modern classrooms?

Anyway, this year’s show promises much. We have already had , about time, Becta’s announcement of the Home Access programme and I wonder whether the suppliers may be displaying their wares at the show. No doubt the Becta stand will be busy with people enquiring about the scheme. What, however, interests me more about this year’s show are the free evening events. I shall be attending the TEDx event on Wednesday evening but sadly I’ll miss the friday teachmeet. The Thursday event I may or may not be able to attend depending upon train times.

Anyway, I shall no doubt be tweeting about the show while I’m there and hopefully meeting people.

June 2010 update

Well, what a different half a year makes! Six months later and the whole ICT in education world seems to have been turned upon its head. The new government has clearly indicated its dislike of ICT because of its costs and has accordingly slashed school’s ICT budgets and disbanded the national organisation, Becta, in charge of ICT in schools. Although Becta is not due to close until March 2011, there must be some doubt as to whether they will have a stand at the next BETT show. Indeed, the impact of the government’s decisions are being felt right across the board and it is now questionable how many people, companies and organisations will be exhibiting at next BETT. I guess at this stage we shall just have to wait and see.

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First day at BETT

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Today was my first day at the 2010 Bett show and it has been a day of highs and lows.

The lows started at the outset; fresh snow had fallen overnight and there was some concern whether the bus would run on time. As it turned out the bus got to London less than 1 hour late which was great considering the conditions and a credit to the driver. In the end I was a lot luckier than than many travelling from parts of Yorkshire or Scotland, who had a far more horrendous journey due to the weather.

The highs were the people I met today. It is always great to meet other proletariat with a passion an interest and insights into the world of ICT in schools. My thanks today go to Richard and Alison Allen, Terry Freedman and Bill Gibbon for sharing their insights. Thanks also to VitalCPD, NAACE and Outstream Consulting for their time and presentations.

A final low for the day and this really hacked me off was the mix up at the hotel. I arrived at the hotel Id booked with the intention of booking in, dropping my bag and then going to the TedxOrenda meeting. On arrival at the hotel, however, the hotel was closed for maintenance and they had to book me into a different hotel. Getting to this hotel, which was a nice one, wasted a lot of time and meant that I could not get to the TED event. Thanks to the power of Twitter , however, I was able to follow key points of the speakers presentations.

May 10th update;

So, four months on and looking back at BETT 2010, was it worthwhile attending? Although I felt that this year’s BETT show lacked the display of new innovations that I like to see at BETT, I do still feel that it was worth the time attending. This year, I felt that the innovation lay in practitioners being given time on various stands to talk about how they had been using technology in their own classroom.

Last year, and a couple of times previously, I had attended a seminar or two while at the show. I didn’t do so this year. My experience in the past has suggested that such seminars rarely tell you anything you don’t already know and, if you’re only at the show for one day, they do take up a lot of time that might have been better spent visiting exhibitors. I have to admmit that on the years when I’ve not attended a BETT seminar, I’ve not come away with the feeling that I’ve missed anything.

Looking back at the time of BETT, I’ve asked myself what have people been talking about since? Well, there’s been talk about 3D projectors and 3D printing, much in the same way that there was talk about the Smart desks after the 2009 BETT, and what has happened to them since?

VLE and their suppliers were quite low key in the 2010 show, unlike the previous two shows. So what has happened to them? Well, to the best of my knowledge, one seems to have gone bust and one or two more seem to have got into financial difficulties. Meanwhile one or two next generation VLEs, based upon school education (e.g. Frog, DBprimary) seem to be emerging and there seems to be renewed interest in Moodle (which on its own is not really a VLE but, similar to Sharepoint, can be added or extended to offer added functionality). At the same time, there has been continued debate in HE circles along the lines of the VLE being dead but this seems to be based upon a misuse of VLEs as CMS. One still hopes the HE guys can get their act together and see that a VLE is far more than a Content Management System.

Of course BETT 2010 all took place before details of Apple‘s iPad were fully known. I daresay that BETT 2011 might have more on display to show how iPads and iPad apps can be used in education ….. but then maybe not, after all the iPhone and iPod Touch were very conspicuous by their absence in BETT2010 exhibits; it’s as if the whole concept of handheld or personal learning has not yet reached BETT :(

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BETT2010 where were the little things?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

@digitalmaverick
Image by dougwoods via Flickr

Like many other people I have been reflecting upon BETT2010. Like many others I have commented that I feel this year’s show, although bigger than ever, seemed to lack much in the way of innovation. What I did like about this year’s BETT though was the involvement of practitioners, especially through the TeachMeet takeovers, which saw educationalists take over a company’s stand (with their consent) for about 15 mins and give a presentation on how they used ICT in their work, and also the evening events such as TEDxOrenda and TeachMeetBETT. Sadly I was unable to get to these evening events (I was due to attend the TEDx event but had troubles booking into my hotel and found myself delayed while booking into another hotel), nevertheless, I was able to follow these events via twitter.

Much credit must be given to people such as @tombarrett and @digitalmaverick for organising these events. I really hope they become an annual occurrence at future BETT exhibitions.

Although there was not much in the way of innovation on display at BETT, the event was still very much dominated by the Big Things. I noticed interactive wall displays that did not require a projector, 3D displays, and 3D projectors, a graffitti wall and lots of big video equipment. Most of the Big Players were also evident again this year; RM, Microsoft, Becta, Espresso, Adobe etc.. Which all gives the impression that big things are most important.

What seemed to be lacking though was much support for small or handheld devices. It does seem that the concept of handheld learning has still not been fully appreciated within the world of educational ICT, at least as far as the vendors and exhibitors at BETT are concerned. This was a disappointment as it suggests not only that the handheld learning world has even more to do before it becomes recognised but also that educational ICT is still dominated by massive infrastructure approaches to ICT. I’d hope that future years might see some change in this.

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