My Page

I travelled down to London for the opening of the BETT show on January 24th, 2017. The event is held at the enormous Excel venue in West London. I took photos during the day as backdrop for this feedback report. BETT is one of the few events that I can think of that brings such the wider education community. This includes primary, secondary, FE, and HE in the UK together with some overseas contributors. There is a significant supplier exhibition, with demonstrations, seminars and an arena program. As well as taking in an overall tour I also spent time at around 15-20 key stands ranging from the start-up entrepreneurs in the Futures Zone, through to the big corporate stands like Microsoft (primary sponsor) as well as investigating some new suppliers that I hadn't heard of before.

First stand I visited was ZZish who were last in the Exhibitor Directory - they provide online quiz technology and there selling point is the back-end analytical systems which enable targeted follow-ups for example including homework setting, additional work on questions which were harder to answer and stretch for the most able.

The BETT Futures zone was full of start ups like MarkIt!! who are a start-up focusing on smart online questions and answers currently based on the A level Maths and Physics curricula. They have learned that the methodology can apply to any curricula so are planning on expanding into other disciplines. This is flipped learning as the work is done off-line and the answers are provided step-by-step which means that problem areas can be picked up and repeated, while the concepts that have been grasped can be skipped.

21st Century Learning are a BETT award winner. They have a learning platform which is based around an Artificial Intelligence engine with PHDs in the background in AI who drive the system development. This means that every time the system collects information (which is not personalised) it can respond with follow-up questions in terms of breadth and depth. They are aiming to develop a truly personalised learning platform for every learner.

I also attended the keynote Microsoft session (Anthony Salcito VP Worldwide Education). The Secretary of State was there but I didn't bump into her or her entourage. Key take-aways from the event included:

Lots of Virtual Reality developments for the classroom
Launch of Google's VR Expedition technology (field trips to anywhere)
Quizzes and assessments linked to big data analysis
Hololens demonstrators
Apps aplenty
A guided tour of the HP intelligent classroom of the future
Launch of a life-sized "HumaGram" which chief designer Land Rover (Oliver LeGrice) demonstrated live - short clip available and on page 11 of the Evening Standard.
I also returned with a cardboard VR set with links to the Youtube VR channel

I guess that we should all be considering how we can utilise and use these new channels at pace - they make paper prospectuses and web pages look very dated. As you can perhaps sense I found it an inspiring event!

The HP intelligent classroom provided a hands-on experience which focused on the student and teacher experience rather than the technology. Every workstation had a tablet and the first thing demonstrated was the teacher logging in (using multi-factor authentication) and as we arrived into the room our attendance information was collected (using beacon proximity and the Aruba ClearPass technology). When we logged in the teacher had our photos and records from the MyClass Attendance App. Our own mobile devices were checked and any "malicious" apps were disabled as we were on school premises. There was an App called Nearpod which asked some questions about the class and we could see how others were doing. The teacher could focus on the questions that the class (and individuals) had found more tricky.

While there, I also took the chance to meet up with one or two of our key partners including Adobe and Microsoft (the HE education teams were at BETT). There are some interesting links - which may already have established of course - with local showcase colleges like Shireland. We may wish to explore an invitation through Microsoft to a future forum.

The Arena was full for the Microsoft Keynote - I took snaps of two slides. I liked the one about the new generation of services AirBnb (no property), Skype (no telco), Facebook (no content), Netflix (no cinemas), Uber (no cars). Microsoft also presented its framework for transformation. Click on the above photos to see the screenshots full size.

Thanks for viewing - this is my first attempt at Adobe Spark. This was inspired by a demonstration which I attended by the University of Lincoln academic staff who are using Spark with students to present their portfolios, and also using Spark to re-engineer and bring to life Word-type documents like course and module information.

If you want any more information I have a collection of guides, pamphlets and glossy materials to take away. Thank you for dropping by.

Appreciate

Report Abuse