BETTShow 2015

Virtual BETT - Session 1

This year will be the first year in over 25 years that I will not be attending the BETT Show. I'm not sure whether I am sad of relieved. Travelling to BETT has just become more and more of a chore over the years and my remote location now makes it just too much, especially as Excel is hardly a great destination.


I picked the following picture from the BETTSHow catalogue images as it seems to represent what the show has ended up becoming - crowded, with  people who are in various stages of interest, indifference and exhaustion. Last year I arrived later than planned on the day that I attended and, arriving at 1300 I was stunned to see vast numbers of people LEAVING the show. Many years ago even two days would not enable someone to take in everything that was on offer.


Anyhow, I thought that instead of going I would see if I could attend virtually and use the online information from different companies, tweets and blog posts from people I respect and other resources to try and get a feel for what was going on at the show.


Today, I have had a quick look at the new exhibitors to see if anyone exciting is on the list and what some of the new trends may be .......


First thing you notice in the 'New exhibitors' section is that, once again, BETTShow web site is completely messing everyone around in that it has many companies who were there last year, so it takes you longer to review 'new' companies than it should!!

OK .... so I started this yesterday and it soon became clear this was not going to be a 'quick look' ... so here is my first thoughts ... many more to come.

Trend 1 - Different ways of exploring the development of computational thinking.

The first company I saw was Fuze Technologies who are showing a Raspberry Pi based system which is basically a Pi inside a solid looking case with an equally solid looking keyboard - very BBC B ish which is quite in keeping with the Pi's Acorn heritage. The unit looks solid and easy to use but after logging into their site and downloading some teaching resources their Fuze basic and the lesson plans that introduce it just look rather boring and, being honest, not much fun or even well structured. However, if you are going to use a Pi and want a robust base to put it in this looks good, as does their robotic arm. But don't rely on this if you are an inexperienced teacher who is not strong at coding as many of your pupils may start pushing your knowledge to the limit very soon.

Next was Grok Learning, out of Australia, providing an online environment to learn programming. They are clearly new and have some early Python activities that are based around the same approach as sites such as Kahn Academy and w3school  where there is a window for instructions to be typed or edited aand the results are displayed in another window or pane. This approach works very well with Kahn and w3school so it should work well with Groc. I tried some of their free, entry level activities and they were easy to do, if somewhat limited. I'm also not sure what their prices are for school site or bulk licences. However, this is definitely one to watch - perhaps at BETT2016??

Loopy Computy is introducing a range of kits and activities to support learning programming in Primary. The very 'Heath Robinson' approach will be of interest to many Primary teachers who like to give their pupils a chance to learn by building things themselves. Using Scratch as the programming language makes things much easier and the Ohbot will certainly make for a good BETT scene stealer. My concern would be about future support and the robustness of the kits and the Ohbot in the hustle and bustle of a Primary School classroom. I've used similar robotic kits in a variety of contexts in my time and they were fine when they first arrived but once a key part was lost or broken or there was not enough kit left for it to be used with enough pupils in the class then it soon became a store cupboard squatter. Worse still, if the teacher was too worried about the equipment to let the pupils have real control over the building and the robot just became a 'toy' to demonstrate how things could be done - OUCH!!

Look out for more comment from my virtual tour of BETT 2015 ....