Of all the education shows held in the UK, BETT is probably the biggest by far. Each year, thousands of visitors head along to Olympia in London to wander around two halls packed with exhibitors showing off their wares. Traditionally, BETT is the place to go to see new and emerging innovations in software, hardware and general applications for schools. Meeting up with old friends and colleagues is another great reason, as are the many and varied keynote speeches that are made over the four day event. BETT 07 runs from Wednesday 10th January until Saturday 13th January.
Cleveratom will be working alongside the BBC and Apple computers to run the Create At BETT stand – a feature stand at the top of the stairs in the national hall. Create at BETT is the only stand that features children doing some really rather cool things with technology. Nothing is being sold, and only interesting conversation and information is being given away. This stand has been a focus for us for the last five years and now as Cleveratom we are delighted to be involved once more.
When you visit the stand you will be able to see children from King Harold School, Waltham Abbey, working with all kinds of kit and demonstrating digital video, animation, podcasting and explaining how these things might fit in to the curriculum. If you are a teacher then it may be the last thing you want – time with a group of children, but seldom will you get to talk to a group who are so able with technology and so pleased to be able to advise you on how it helps their learning. I urge you to come and strike up a conversation with them!
At the same time, you’ll be invited to use some of the tools, too! We will be running a number of different pieces of technology, including chroma key video to enable you to choose a piece of video and talk in front of it, then have it podcast like a mini lesson. The BBC have kindly found a number of short clips which we have put on to DVD and set up like a video jukebox (thanks to Alex Blanc for the help scripting the original version of this). You click a number of clips and they play back in the order you chose.
David Baugh and Chris Morley from Learning Central will be there too. An ‘Apple Distinguished Educator’ (ADE), David will be running some of the features on the stand as well as promoting the new Digital Cre8or award from the British Computer Society.