Jan 13 2008
BETT – back from Egypt its time to hit the wonderful Education Tech Show
Well believe it or not this was my first time at BETT, the main British Education and Technology show. The show for a first timer, was as large and ostentatious as others had suggested and at points it is astounding how the use of Technology within Education is so big business. I know that may sound a little naive but after quite a few years away from the UK International Schools with limited budgets it does make you wonder how often the amount spent on Technology does result in better learning and teaching within the classroom. Below is simply a small list of some items that I cam across and thought were either useful or interesting:-
- Mindstorms the NXT Generation – However much I wonder at the losing bits and pieces scenario of Mindstorms and therefore its longevity within a school environment Lego’s new range looks a giant step up from the yellow bricks before. The amount of sensors and the ability to build and create relatively quickly the basic robot, along with drag and drop software which enables immediate results but also lends itself to a wide variety of much more complex tasks suggests that this might be a much better learning tool and one which could link in well with a Design and Technology robotics project.
- Gigajam – One that impressed due to the company being a much smaller player inthe BETT arena. Also there was very little music based tutorial software out there that professes the idea of facilitation to learn rather than the teacher as content provider and centre. Worth checking out, especially if your school wishes to improve the equality of access to individual music tuition but students cannot afford the prices of real tutors.
- StudyWiz, Kaleidos, Blackboard/WebCT , Serco MIS and other MIS/ Learning Platforms definitely seems the buzzwords at this BETT. This is such a large issue to even begin to discuss I will chat about this in a second blog post in the coming week, to see whether these all consuming platforms are the way forward.
- Activote Promethean if Learning Platforms were the main buzzwords seems the technology item that has proliferated the most, with many companies offering active voting systems that link in with Interactive Whiteboard quizzes and tests. Myself and fellow teacher James had similar thoughts that maybe this would just be a gimic but after testing the system we were addicted and could see how this would work within a classroom. The setup of quizzes seemed very easy and would enable any teacher to construct quizzes within a matter of minutes. So maybe worth investing in a set or two.
- Terry Freedman and Miles Berry Personalised Learning -over the rush of a day with so much to see it was difficult to fit in any of the seminars available. However I did manage to pop into Terry and Miles’s seminar on Personalised Learning. Unfortunately the seminar had been pre-booked and so there was only standing room. I managed to watch the introduction by Miles Berry which set out some interesting ideas. You can watch the seminar as a Google Video over at Terry Freedman’s site, note he does mention my studies into using NING as a social network for language learning. So pop along and have a look.
- Tablet PC’s Asus eeeePC, as many reviews are raving about this new laptop it was interesting to see one and have a little play. My fellow conspirator at the event James is an avid Linux user so he was pleased to see that a version of Linux is the operating system running on these laptops.Being all open source software is fabulous and this would be a great portable computer for students, after seeing so many students this year without their laptops for often many weeks due to problems with screens breaking, due to general damage I can see how such a small durable laptop would solve some of these problems.
- Weather Stations for Datalogging – I have always thought that this would be a good idea, and passed by a stall selling these contraptions. You can see from Barming Primary School how such a system could be used in lower school, but I am sure the data-logging and statistics produced would come invaluable across many areas of the curriculum throughout a school.
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