Although I wasn’t able to attend this year’s BETT show in London, it was still possible to find out about the new products and services being shown, as well as the fantastic presentations being given by teachers and educators, thanks to the Internet! Here is a review of what I discovered from this year’s BETT:

• The New at BETT online publication outlines some of the new products that were featured at the show.
• The Bee-it site has a number of posts about BETT, including a list of the winners of this year’s BETT Awards. They also have daily reports from their time there… see Day One, Day Two, Day Three and Day Four.
• The TES have a list of the workshops that tool place on their site, along with related ideas and resources that you can use.
• Chris Ratcliffe, from Scholastic, has also created set of day by day posts… Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Teacher Blog Posts:

• Ollie Bray’s blog has a number of interesting posts about his favourite parts of BETT 2011.
• Alex Findlay has written his review of the event which he feels was ‘calmer than normal’.
• @misterel has posted the Teachmeet presentation that he gave about using EasyVoter in Moodle as well as a review of his experiences.
• Bev Evans gives a detailed outline of the event, along with her top 10 highlights, in her ‘London Calling’ blog post.

Image – BETT 2011

• Alessio Bernardelli has shared some of his favourite memories from the day that he spent at BETT.
• Ian Addison has also shared his thoughts about some of the things that he saw. Kevin McLaughlin has also written about the benefits of connecting with other teachers and educators at the event.
• The Geeky ICT Teacher has a list of some useful ideas and resources that she came across.
• Tim Rylands’ site has a review of his presentation called ‘ICT to Inspire’ which also involved Simon Widdowson and Kevin McLaughlin.
• Danny Nicholson has two posts (here and here) which mention some exciting new products and interactive whiteboard resources.
• Jason Dilling has produced an account of his visits to the Frog and Fronter stands to view their products.
• Dai Barnes has also written about the Teachmeet event on the Friday night which he watched online. You can watch a recording of the event here.
• Simon Widdowson and Simon Haughton have both written some extremely interesting reports about their visit to the events, with information about the presentations that they gave.

Audio, Photos and Videos:

• Here is a collection of photos from BETT 2011. Which tools, sites and products can you see featured in the images?
• Leon Cych has created a video playlist of his videos from BETT. View them here or subscribe in iTunes.

Browsing through all of this information about BETT, it seems that there were very few big announcements and new products revealed at the event. The main highlight for lots of the teachers seem to be the Teachmeet and Teachmeet Takeover events… this was certainly the case for me when I attended in 2010.

Did you go to BETT 2011? What were your favourite parts of your trip?

Happy New Year! I hope that you enjoyed the Christmas break. Here are links to some recent education-related news:

• The quality of science education in England’s secondary schools has improved in the past three years, Ofsted inspectors say. You can read the official report here.
• More than one-in-10 state secondary schools in England are now academies, outside of local authority control. However, research has found that just a quarter of adults wanted new-style schools run by parents and private companies in their area and the majority opposed proposals to give them extra independence.
• Head teachers have warned that schools will be effectively powerless to expel the worst behaved children under controversial Government reforms to discipline policies.
• GCSEs should be scrapped and replaced with new tests for 14-year-olds, says ex-Education Secretary Estelle Morris.
• The former children’s commissioner for England has warned that the coalition’s “savage” cuts risk robbing a generation of the chance to improve their lives and risk crushing social mobility.
• The government has been accused of performing a partial U-turn over funding for a charity that gives free books to children.

Image – Seuss Collection

• Two former teachers are on a mission to make reading fun by writing some new adventure stories.
• Children as young as four are being tutored to pass the 11-plus examination amid rising competition to get into grammar schools.
• Almost a fifth of secondary schools were in deficit at the end of last year.
• An independent school entrance examination is to be put online to make it less stressful for pupils.
• A quarter of a million students could miss out on university this year amid record demand for places before a hike in tuition fees.
• Ballroom dancing should be taught widely in schools to help children learn discipline and to develop good relations between boys and girls, Ann Widdecombe has said.
• In this report in the Guardian, an ex-teacher outlines why she is home schooling her own children.
• A series of programmes on ITV1 has been asking if we are putting children under too much pressure.
• Children are being left without decent adult role models because of the decline of the traditional extended family, according to a leading headmistress.
• The National Bullying Helpline has closed due to a lack of funding and the resignation of its chief executive Christine Pratt.

Next week’s Teaching Events include:

• 15th January - Martin Luther King’s Birthday
• 12th-15th January – BETT

If you are attending BETT, read these handy guides to help you make the most of your visit:

• BETT for Beginners
• Alternative Guide to BETT
• BETT 2011 – who to visit? where to start?

BETT, the ‘world’s largest educational technology event’ took place last week and I was very lucky to be able to spend a few days there. Here are some of the things that I discovered:

• Anithings – A ‘creativity tool’ which lets children create animations by simply dragging objects around on screen. It costs £250 for a site licence, but there is a 10% discount during January.

• Interactive Resources – This company makes the (extremely useful) Maths Packs, Teaching materials and Primary Games which can be used on interactive whiteboard and / or individual computers. During BETT, I was given a quick tour of the new online version of their site, allowing teachers (and pupils) to access the resources online at home and school. Teachers can also filter all of the resources by subject / topic and allocate activities to students who can try them when they next log in.
• Story Stage – I watched a demo of this software from Scholastic and was really impressed at the ability to connect multiple mice to the same computer, allowing children to work collaboratively. Why doesn’t all software allow multiple users like Story Stage?

• Smart – It was nice to hear about the release of Smart Notebook 10.6 (available now) which brings compatibility with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard on the Mac. It also has a ‘transparent’ tool which makes the Smart Notebook interface disappear, as well as a number of new Maths tools.
• 2Simple – I managed to get a final copy of 2Create a SuperStory, as well as trials of 2Assess ICT and the Online Tools. I’m really impressed with the potential of the online tools, allowing children to use creative software at home and school and save their work to an online storage area. Anthony Evans showed me 2Design&Make (built into the online tools) to make some fantastic 3D models.

• Linkbun.ch – Allows you to share lots of links with one small link which can then be shared via email / Twitter etc. Thanks to @ianyorston for sharing this gem.
• Stupflix – This looks a little like Animoto (as both allow you to combine audio / photos / video) but Stupeflix seems to have more customisation options. Shared by @digitalmaverick.

• Dabbleboard – An online collaborative whiteboard. I’ve used Dabbleboard at home once or twice, but never in the classroom. @bevevans22 talked about this during a Teachmeet Takeover session and I can definitely see it being a valuable addition to a lesson.
• Scratch – Scratch is a programming language which I’ve always thought was a bit complicated. However, @mberry gave us all an entertaining 7 minute demonstration of the program and made it all look incredibly easy. Downloading and trying Scratch is now high up on my ‘to do’ list.

• Newseum - @digitalmaverick mentioned this during his Teachmeet Takeover session about Glogster. The Front pages section lets you view the front pages of a huge collection of newspapers from around the world.
• Class blogging - Oliver Quinlan gave a really inspiring presentation about his class blogs and how time is given for the children to respond to each others’ blog posts. We regularly post items on our school website / blog but children rarely have time to add their own thoughts… something that is sure to change now!

Did you go to BETT? What did you discover?

As the title of this post suggests, I wasn’t able to go to BETT 2009 for one reason or another, although I have been going annually for the past eight years. However, this didn’t mean that I wasn’t able to learn about some of the new developments being shown off, or hear from those who actually were at the event.

So what did I discover from ‘visiting’ at a distance?

2DIY – This new software was something that I really would have liked to have seen first-hand at the show. It allows primary children to make their own Flash resources, interactive games, puzzles and quizzes. Anthony Evans has made some examples here.

New Senteo software - Danny Nicholson mentioned that v2 of the Senteo voting software was available in one of his blog posts. As a Senteo user at school, I’ve downloaded this at home over the weekend so that I can try it out before installing it in my classrooms.

Interactive tables - The Microsoft Surface and Smart Table were both at the show, and it would have been nice to be able to see them in action. While it might be a while before we see these in classrooms, it’s certainly interesting thinking about how they might be used in the future.

Teachmeet – This fantastic meeting of teachers and others involved in education is a great way of sharing what people are actually doing in the classroom. With lots of short presentations, there were a wide range of ideas shared which others can then take away and try for themselves. I was able to watch the Teachmeet via a live video stream, so didn’t miss out too much here (apart from the free beer).

Photoshop Tennis - One of the highlights of the Teachmeet evening was Photoshop Tennis, where students start by editing a given image using Photoshop (or other similar editing software). The new image is then edited by another pupil and this continues. There are some examples on the Flickr group. Since hearing about it, I’ve been wondering how a similar activity could be tried in a primary classroom, using some of the drawing packages available to us.

Admittedly, I would have learned about a whole lot more had I actually gone to the show, and I missed all of the seminars and presentations. However, by posting online, those who were at the show filtered through a lot of the information from the exhibition and highlighted the best bits for those of us who couldn’t make it. Thanks everyone!

There were a number of tools which helped me to find out about all of this:

1) Twitter – A large number of my Twitter friends did get to BETT and there were tweets galore about the things that they saw, heard and found. Using Tweetdeck, I was able to run a search for ‘#bett09′ and as people posted messages about the things that were going on, they popped up on my screen. The Teachmeet event on the Friday evening also had it’s own hashtag (#tmbett09) and as the event progressed, people posted their thoughts and experiences using that tag to make searching for their thoughts easier.

2) Blog posts – Lots of blogs mentioned the new things that people had seen at BETT. Using mobile technology a number of people managed to blog as they were going around the exhibition.

3) Live video – The Teachmeet event was broadcast live over the Internet, using Flashmeeting, Qik and Ustream. I watched most of the Ustream because it seemed to have better quality sound. Thanks to the person who set this up, as I didn’t see who was running it.

It was great to be able to read, see and hear people’s reflections of BETT as it was happening. However, I think that I really would like to go again next year and see things first hand. If I’m able to, I’d also love to make it to my first Teachmeet!

Image: ‘BETT in toy town tiltshift stylee!‘