BETT 2010 … should I go, shouldn’t I go? It was a debate I had with myself and with colleagues before I went to BETT (on Saturday, the last day of the show ) and now in this blog post I am going to share and reflect on what I saw and whether I think it was worth it in the end.

What I expected to see was a lot of companies selling their educationally relevant technological wares, with some teachers sharing their experiences of using technology to support their learners … and that is more or less what I saw! On my way to London I also picked up the Guardian’s tweet about their BETT Show article ‘Its not just about computing‘  … having been myself now I can certainly see what they meant about this years show.

So now to a summary of what I saw:

• A very wide range of software, hardware and service providers all keen to share their wares … lots aimed at schools but many relevant to most learning provider.
• A teacher talking about glogging as part of the ‘Teachmeet takeover‘ … glogging being something I will be exploring in more detail and the Teachmeet being a great part of this years event, from what I have read in several blogs today (Learn4Life and  The Whiteboard Blog to name but two).
• Lots about Green ICT/being environmentally aware, including £65 pcs that use 1Watt (i.e. virtual desktops) … Jon (our technical expert) has talked about these a lot but now I have seen them in action and read a couple of case studies, I really ‘get it’ and think lots of organisations should too!
• Interactive WhiteBoard (with or without the short throw projectors) after IWB after IWB … but the Ver-table-interactive from RM (a moveable IWB with a short throw projector attached that can be flipped into a touch screen surface)  really caught my eye.
• Free web resources from E2BN (East of England Broadband Network), which although largely for schools did include some for all ages … ones to explore further include E-ngagelive, for interactive roleplay with online experts and Discovery Box, a tool that enables you to make up virtual boxes with images, video, sound about any topic.
• Lots of laptops/netbooks … including the Intel Classmate PC (not new I know but the first time I had seen it to touch), with its swivel screen that turns it into a tablet and whose handle makes it easy to carry.
• Becta’s new publications, ‘Raising Standards’ & ‘Inspiring Learners’  … which I had downloaded and put in the ‘To read’ folder on my desktop but which I now can read away from my desk!
• A very attractive looking Sharepoint being demonstrated for use by a school.
• Flexible furniture from a whole range of suppliers … secure desks, movable mounts for monitors, portable banks of workstations, now its a desk, now its a PC table. Great for learning spaces that need to be flexible.
• Digital signage for public areas … landscape, widescreen,  portrait (my favourite), very large and even signage projected onto the floor that reacted as you walked through it (although this last seemd to be an Olympia thing rather than a BETT exhibitor thing).

… and a Dell robot chatting to 8 year old boy who was completely engaged.

There was obvioulsy a lot more to see but being late getting to the last day of the show because of closures on the underground and in the interest of a digestible blog post, these are really my edited highlights or things that have stuck in my mind. My final thought is about whether I think it was worth going to BETT 2010 this year … and my conclusion is that it was, because I saw things I wouldn’t otherwise have done (ver-table and flexible furniture), learnt first hand how effective something I had heard about but not seen can be (virtual desktops) and have come away wanting to find out more about at least one thing (glogging) … but I won’t be going again next year … or not on a Saturday, at least