BETT 2006
Went to BETT, the enormous, UK annual education technology show running 11 through to 14 January at Olympia, London, with my trusty network developer Mark Herdman yesterday.
I haven't been for a couple of years, and my reason for being there was also the show's big story this year - the success of the Moodle communities Help Us Get To BETT (HUGToB) campaign. For those of you who haven't been following the story over at their site or at Moodlebug, check out their Moodle Manifesto. In a nutshell, it's been a mammoth fund raising effort by a bunch of digital mavericks - teachers and others passionate bout and involved in education - to get the open source learning platform representation and recognition at the leading industry event. For me it was all about giving educators the information to make a proper choice when it comes to the huge commitment of selecting and embedding a learning platform - not one determined by which product can afford the biggest advertising budget, but which product solves the most problems for you both now and in the future.
I worked on the stand yesterday afternoon and you can read more about that at Moodlebug. (Cheers to Stuart Yeates for the picture of me in my new Moodle shirt!)
One of the most noticeable thing about the show this year was the proliferation of CCTV camera sales people. It was slightly sad to see surveillance as such a prominent theme at an EdTech show, and Mark and I had to restrain ourselves from asking vendors if they had any child sized lie detector equipment available.
There was also a small proliferation of 3D copier stands, which are always pretty cool to see.
The only Wow! factor (apart from Moodle of course) for me was the BBC's new digital learning service, previously working under the title Digital Curriculum, now called the much more funky and delicious BBC Jam, "a free online service for 5- to 16-year-olds, learning both at home and through school. Its learner-centered approach will be particularly aimed at those least likely to succeed through more conventional educational approaches". One of the demos included a series of cards with simple block patterns, which transformed into three dimensional cartoon characters when seen on screen through a web cam.
There's not a whole lot up at the moment, but you can check out the Jam press release and the BETT press release, and I'll write more soon.
It was great to see Computer Clubs 4 Girls (CC4g) there and doing so well. I did try and find out some information for the blog, like the numbers of active clubs in the UK at the moment, unfortunately the people at the stand only had the figures for the numbers of institutions who have registered an interest in running one in the future. I also asked about the decision to switch the volunteer application process - I was told it became a necessary decision due to lack of funding. If you're going to run a national scheme, staff it entirely with volunteers, and pin the hopes of addressing the gender imbalance in technology and the chronic shortage of IT professionals in the UK on it, the least you'd think the government would be able to manage would be paying for the application process.
Anyway, we consoled ourselves with a fantasy about the next round of CC4G activities being produced by a cabal of radical feminists, who would replace the current focus on projects emulating celebrity and fashion obsessions with interrogations of digital manipulation in glossy magazines and the production of online grrrl zines.
Ah well, maybe next year...
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