More Highlights and Takeaways from BETT

It was great to get back to the BETT show this year - I have attended for at least the last 8 years.  The first thing I noticed about holding the show in March is the weather - it was much warmer and sunny, let’s hope for the same next year!

I visited on Friday, the final day. Once again it was spread over north and south halls organised into different sections - Teaching and learning tech, Management solutions, Equipment and Hardware and BETT futures, along with the various arenas for discussions. I was disappointed not to have made it to the Thursday evening CAS after hours event or the launch of the Primary Leaders toolkit, but luckily, I still was able to get a copy. 

Google was noticeably absent from the main halls and instead using one of the suites - it wasn’t clear if you needed to arrange meetings to venture up into the suites. Although, there were various Google sections as part of other stands, showcasing elements of Google Workspace.

As usual, I walked around both halls first, looking at the stands before going back to explore in more detail. For the first time in a while, I didn’t have a particular focus this year as we are working on embedding our current tools. So, I took the opportunity to catch up with colleagues, who I had only met online, share a coffee, and discuss what we had seen. This year, there were separate areas for Higher Education, which I didn’t visit, and the Global Showcase area where the international stands were together. 

Whilst walking round, I felt there were not many ‘wow’ moments this year. I found the companies with whiteboards/screens all offering the same features as each other and the ones we currently use. I took the opportunity to explore some other brands for replacing our devices, as we are working more flexibly following the pandemic and we are in the market for laptops and docking stations rather than desktops. The Microsoft stand stood out as it was huge, with different sections for different tools and ideas and the Benq double decker was different to what I had seen before.  

As we are starting to use Chromebooks more in the classroom, one of the standout items for me was a large 17” Chromebook from Asus which will be better for our staff to use instead of their current windows desktops. I was also interested in looking at how we can use Chromeboxes with current equipment to enable more flexibility. The team on the stand were incredibly helpful and supportive. 

I didn’t see many stands offering much for the computing curriculum, there were some with robotics, some that stood out and some that were like others we already have or that are available. I was impressed by some of the simple robotics for early years and our special school that would hopefully be simple and suitable for the children. I also liked the TTS stand - it was very practical and set up like an early years setting which gave me ideas to take back to school for continuous provision across both early years and our special school.

One of the main stands that stood out for me, was from Creative Hut. They had many items available so you could explore and play, in addition to finding different robots, I also found digital cutters which would be use for DT and STEM too.

I hadn’t planned on attending any of the sessions in the theatres/lounges as I was co-presenting a session about our experience of our computing deep dive alongside Neil Rickus and Satya Maremanda. This was a fantastic experience, as I have only spoken at local events before, it was great to share my experiences, speak to people and answer their questions.

Overall, it was a great experience as always, but it felt like there was something missing. Many stands seemed to be much smaller and subdued, but overall it was still worth visiting for ideas and to network and catch up with other computing and technology leads.