It’s great to be back at BETT!

BETT 2022 was larger than life with so much going on over the 3 days. It is still the biggest TechEd show and this was borne out by the number of teachers, educators and businesses who were there. Thank goodness for the handy app which allowed everyone to plan their schedules before attending!

And, as always, BETT delivered – with a variety of inspirational themes, such as classrooms of the future, AI enhanced learning solutions and plenty of thought-provoking sessions. The CAS team were excited to meet people in person after only seeing them on screens or interacting through social media for the past two years and some of them have given their thoughts for this article.

Some of the highlights

Julia Adamson, Director of Education, mentioned, “I was particularly pleased to see so many educators join us for the Computing Quality Framework seminar, in fact it was standing room only! We saw a flurry of signups to the online self-review tool, with over 1,000 schools now using it.” (The Computing Quality Framework helps schools review their progress in developing the computing curriculum. The framework guides you through each aspect of computing, helping you to access the NCCE’s wide range of resources. Schools can be supported by the NCCE Computing Hubs who will focus their support based on the outcomes of the self-reviews of schools in their regions.)

Pete Marshman, Community Outreach Manager, said “I enjoyed the session focused on addressing critical students’ needs with accessible solutions – a wonderful talk with some great ideas about offering choice and learner control.  It made me think, alongside the Microsoft events I’ve attended earlier about how CAS could provide more accessible content and how we might consider the needs of all young people when developing classroom resources.”

The welcome return of networking

Informal networking is a major source of CPD and inspiration, so it was great to bring CAS members together for an after-hours event on Thursday afternoon, especially as some of them had never met face to face before!

So many high-quality conversations took place between CAS members old and new – sharing stories about the impact that CAS was having on teachers and students.

One in particular stood out for Julia “Allen Tsui, a primary subject specialist, reflected how he’d been asked to step up to teach an Y13 A Level Computer Science class. Allen attributes his success in being able to do this to the support he had through the CAS community, and resources made available through the National Centre for Computing Education.”

Beverly Clarke, National Community Manager, commented “The CAS Networking session was a great coming together of our community and I left knowing that our community is served well – in particular this statement from @makercupboard (paraphrased) – CAS has been invaluable to me, it has been a major part of my learning network – thank you for everything”.

Sarah Zaman, Community Outreach Manager, mentioned “It was good to chat to teachers in person about CAS at the Networking event as well and make new connections there. I can then hopefully pass these new connections on to the North East, Cumbria and Yorkshire CAS community leads to share with their local teachers.”

Food for thought

Sarah mentioned one of her highlights worth noting was “Redfern Electronics, who make the Crumble controller, are bringing out a data logger which will have free software to go with it. I spent quite a while talking it through and think it could be a great cheap but effective device for data logging. Teachers are always telling me that it's one area they struggle with and with small budgets too. I am hoping to trial one very soon and will report back.” 

Jon Chippindall, Barefoot Content Director, also noticed a development from Redfern - he explained: “Honey I shrunk the Crumbles! This is the new Crumble-mini which Redfern gave a sneak preview of at Bett 2022. With much of the capability of the Crumble but smaller in form it opens up lots of opportunity for embedding in engineering/D&T projects.”

And Tim Wilson, Community Outreach Manager, was pleased about the amount of conversation on diversity and inclusion “For example, through the Global Equality Collective, with many shared stories of success in action. The challenge is how all the amazing opportunities translate in real terms to ensuring access for ALL and the role that CAS can play in this.”

Pete told us there was a significant increase in the promotion of physical computing. He noticed how the micro:bit was being used by a large number of organisations as a basis of products they were promoting, demonstrating the versatility and popularity of this device among teachers.

In summary

CAS was very much on the agenda at BETT and all events were really well attended. We saw packed spaces and tonnes of interest, from existing supporters and new contacts alike – and some good leads were generated.

The final word goes to Beverly “From me to our community – a massive thank you to all CAS Community Leaders, CAS Members and partnership organisations who help us to deliver.”