Educloud

Last week saw the 26^th BETT (British Education and Training Technology) show at Olympia, London taking place.  Billed as “the world’s largest educational technology event”, BETT is home to 700 stands and 29,000 visitors over its 4 days.  With all the major names in education technology innovation and supply on show it had to be the right place for Educloud to visit!

So, how did we get on?  What was cool, what was not?  What will be the next “big thing” to hit education?  And just how how visionary was the picture of education for the future that was painted at the show?  Read on to find out…

Is BETT really big enough to show the future?

Put simply, BETT is big.  You cannot do the show in one day and the event spans both the National and the Grand Halls at Olympia.  We dedicated three days to really get a feel for what is happening right now in the ICT education marketplace and what is about to come.

As always, the atmosphere was friendly, relaxed and energised.  There was a sense of purpose to the show and a sea of faces and organisations from the whole educational spectrum both in the UK and abroad.  The exhibitors ranged from one-man-bands to established multi-nationals.

There was the usual big names taking prominence in the Grand Hall (think Microsoft, RM, Serco Learning, Capita and Pearson) as well as companies which have grown over the past few years due to their successes (2Simple, Education City, Espresso) and the key Government agencies were also on hand to offer advice and guidance in the National Hall (Becta, National College, DCSF, QCDA, etc.).  Many stands were in the same places as last year and it was good to see so many of them back again, apparently largely unaffected by the current poor economic climate.

What about mobile?

Given the amount of promotion last year, we did expect to see more for handheld learning but it didn’t seem to make much of an impact this year.  Perhaps this is because people now expect to be able to access information on any devices, regardless whether they are laptops, PDAs, tablets or mobiles.  We did see a few stands displaying large cut outs of Apple’s iPhone.  But once you ventured onto the stand it usually turned out to simply be a conversation starter.

The BETT organisers were at least embracing technology by operating an SMS service where you could text a short code and receive information on stands that you were unable to visit.  The extended free Wi-Fi service meant that people could check email and vendor web sites over coffee which is always welcome.

Any other technologies and innovation of note?

I have to admit to being a little disappointed by the pre-BETT Planner.  I expected it to provide me with a map of who to visit with a suggested route to take, but it seemed to be just a list of stands to visit.  This is fine when you want something specific e.g. Early Years software but it wasn’t the one-stop-shop I was expecting.

Educloud were stopped on the second day and asked to take part in a visitor survey for  TechSmith (they make Camtasia and Morae which we like).  Of the questions asked, the most interesting was:

“What do you see as the next big thing in ICT and education?”

Clearly the answer from us was:

“Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS)”

But we were curious to find out what others were saying…

Firstly, Professor Stephen Heppell was back at BETT again with ‘Playful Learning’ exploring how games can assist in making learning more fun and reinvigorating young people and.

Secondly, Future Learning Spaces had a whole area dedicated to the future of learning with presentations and demonstrations of what a future school could be like and how it would embrace technology enabling any-time, anywhere learning.  On a similar note, RM had taken over a whole floor with interactive displays of how technology could be used for learning, including real children!

And, thirdly, while walking on floors with displays that moved, exciting and engaging technologies that could push the potential of learning, apparently most people saying they see the “next big thing” in ICT and education being… interactive whiteboards (IWB)?!!

Yes, that’s right.  According to our friends at TechSmith, most people they asked believed that technology that has been around for over a decade and that (according to Becta’s Harnessing Technology Schools Survey 2007) is already in place in 98% of secondary and 100% of primary schools, will be the next big thing.  Ouch, no wonder they say education lags behind other industries.

I remember when interactive whiteboards first came into schools.  Their use was seen as a new way of replacing the chalkboard, but teachers were still using them to teach with Victorian methods.  (I also remember one school that had an IWB installed at the teacher’s height in a KS1 classroom – how were the children supposed to reach it?!).  Fortunately there is less of this approach now, however it has taken a very long time for this flexible and extremely useful technology to begin to be effectively integrated into everyday learning.

Perhaps this is why a technology that has been around for so long is only now being recognised as “the next big thing”.  Personally, I think that’s quite sad, but then that’s why Educloud exists: to make sure the benefits of cloud and utility computing don’t take so long to been seen.

Looking ahead to BETT 2011

Next year at BETT 2011, I would like to see more examples of emerging technology making an impact on learning.  For this, I am looking to the Building Schools for the Future programme to demonstrate real ground breaking success.

Oh, and on a “visitor experience” note, can we also continue to get the free Wi-Fi and have more places to sit down for coffee and lunch – it is hard work walking around all day looking for the future!