Place your BETTs… *cringes*
Shocking title I know, apologies. Anyway, I’ve wanted to go to BETT for a couple of years and finally made it down this year and am really glad I did. It was as big and bustling as I expected but a couple of areas didn’t measure up to what I hoped.
It was very much a tech show rather than a teach show, with salesperson after salesperson trying to flog or promote their product. However some stands had teachers or even students on hand to showcase their products. Even more exciting, it was great to see the fabled Teachmeet Takeover. As the newbie that I was though I did seem to always be lost or in completely the wrong place to see the sessions I was hoping to catch, although did manage to get to one of them and it was really refreshing to see the passion and enthusiasm for something which he wasn’t getting paid to say!
So amid what seemed row upon row of IT solutions providers, 3D projectors and touch screen companies (the latter two of which were actually pretty cool…for the first couple of stalls) I did manage to have a few interesting finds. The first of which was the first stall I stopped at (albeit in a dazed, overwhelmed state) – Pop4Schools. This is a website teaching the sound part of the science curriculum, with parts of music, DT and enterprise curriculum through recording and producing a pop music CD to market. As a science teacher who is also a musician and works in an enterprise academy this ticks a few boxes!
Next I found a stand showcasing the use of PSPs (and a XBOX360 kinnect). It’s possible to load them with powerpoint slides saved as JPEGs, actual images, videos, or with a camera add-on to use them as imagecode readers. A lot of my students last year had PSPs so there could be some potential there, especially with the older ones, using them as a revision tool. That said I don’t think I’ve seen one this year so maybe that would be jumping on yesterday’s band wagon…
I then headed down the stairs right into the BrainPop UK stand. Now I’ve not used the UK version
"beep beep"
before, but used to have access to the american version and found the videos really useful. Not only did I pick up a cool Brain Pop bag (which then carried my reams of waste paper for the rest of the day) and a free trial but I got to have my photo take with Moby himself! Happy days!
Last website I found which impressed me was myworks produced by the Boardworks people. Two of our main foci at school this year are developing homework and improving the monitoring of students progress over time. I think myworks could kill both those birds with one stone (or at least injure them!) Anyone had any experience using it before?
Finally for now, on the Saturday morning I managed to catch Stephen Heppell give a talk at the Visual learning area. It was great to hear him speak and see some of the amazing learning spaces he’s been involved with/researched. However the talk had a bit of a sales feel for it for Impleo(?) or whoever it was that were sponsoring the area which was a bit of a shame really. Either way it was great seeing the innovative learning spaces and extensive use of visual screens some schools have developed. I work in a new build which has fairly innovative multifunctional areas compared with most older schools, but it was nothing to some of the things he showcased…
