blogging and BETTing!

A new year and a new blog!

I'm starting this blog with an account of my visit to BETT - this was my first visit to BETT, and I could have done with a guide! The exhibition is huge, and packed full of people and gizmos; it’s hard to find your way around despite maps & signs, and the queues for food and for the cloakroom are off-putting. They could do with more seating, too! (proper old moaner, aren’t I?!)

Overall impressions of BETT: it’s a highly commercial event with a salesperson at every corner. The focus was very much on schools rather than any other educational sector, probably because there are a lot more of them hence a lot more money to be made from them (proper old cynic, aren’t I?!). Possible because of this, there was no JISC presence, though Becta was out in force.
Amongst the many stands I particularly noticed: lots of content/course providers (especially for science and art); lots of learning platform/VLE providers; providers of management information systems, classroom sound systems (to remove the need to shout!). There were hardware suppliers, though personally I saw nothing that looked especially interesting – possibly because there were so many people around the best stuff (but Chris Hall from Swansea University found some interesting things: http://swansea-learninglab.blogspot.com/2008/01/bett-2008-worlds-largest-educational.html ). There were a couple of small stands selling ‘immersive’ learning packages, but this sort of learning figured a lot less prominently than I might have expected.

What was good?

• course creation software for mobile devices from m-learning mobi (www.m-learning.mobi ) though not sure how innovative this is;
• BBC Blast (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast) - a BBC addition to their ‘Bitesize’ (and possible to substitute for the loss of BBC Jam) that focuses on arts activities for young people and has some free downloads;
• Futurelab’s ‘enquiring minds’ project (http://www.enquiringminds.org.uk ) which uses technology to help students learn from the questions that they pose ;
• some interesting interactive whiteboard activities from Smart ;
• case studies from City Learning Centres (eg. Teacher training at Wandsworth clc : http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/sie/eic/clc/clccs/clccsteacher );
• QCA e-assessment guide (hefty!)
• …and… building Lego robots! (Lego ‘mindstorms’: http://mindstorms.lego.com );

Other info that I picked up included: OS provide free maps for 11-yr-olds; Channel 4 have a ‘clip-bank’ (which is not free, though maybe there’s some other stuff that is)

http://www.channel4learning.com

; and the BBC interesting oranges!

Next year: I think BETT is best visited by those with a bit more liking and know-how of gadgetry than I have! Whoever goes - I would advise getting the Guardian's ‘Link’ supplement (out mid-Dec) to get background & to help plan, and also study the BETT website beforehand. And - take water and carry as little as possible (maybe deckchair!)