BETT 2015

The fourth time that I visited the British Education Training and Technology show, better known as BETT. This time I was invited to come over and do a session about global collaboration in the Secondary Education Learn Live arena. I travelled with my dad (SMART Exemplary Educator as well) and joined other SEEs in the SMART Platinum Suite or and the main floor of the BETT show.

With Maria and Chris in the Platinum Suite

On day one I was just browsing on the main floor until my presentation was due. While walking and visiting a few stands it occurred to me that nothing new and/or innovative was there to see. A few things I really like is LearnPad and I do hope that working with iPads in my school will be quite successful instead of the warnings that Chris Klein (exhibitor LearnPad) gave me. I also liked the furniture of Space Oasis on which was comfortable, looked really nice and on which you could write with a dry eraser marker. And of course I liked the new solution by SMART Technologies: The SMARTkapp, the reinvented version of the dry-erase board AND the flip-over which is due to it's simplicity amazing. No nonsense, yet super hight-tech information sharing system which could be used in the classroom as well. I would really like to have won one at the BETT contest during the BETT days. I attended and even contributed to the session of the official release of SMARTkapp at BETT in the Platinum Suite by CTO Warren Barkley. And in the evening SMARTamp wins the BETT Award, which I can relate to for sure. SMARTamp is becoming more and more my favorite solution in (and outside) the classroom.

On day two I met my buddy SEE from Madrid, Spain: Sergio! Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend his presentation about Augmented Reality, because it was due on Saturday. Although I was able to attend to the presentation of Chris and Maria about their global collaboration project and the presentation about SOLE. Both in the Platinum Suite. After collecting a lot of pens and other goodies for my kids and students I returned home with a lot of new input that still needs processing ...

After the two days of attending BETT it became very clear to me that it's still the teacher that is key in developing education and his students, regardless of the use of technology (both hardware and software) furniture, books or whatever. As Chris Klein pointed out to me: "... a good teacher could use only a loaf of bread to provide a good lesson." 

With my dad in the SMART Platinum Suite