Reflections from BETT

 

It was nice to be at BETT this year, being able to see other people face to face! Over the 3 days of the show there were really interesting presentations, products and innovations in the world of EdTech. 

The launch of the CAS Primary Leaders Toolkit, which identifies key areas of focus for Computing Leads as well as case studies to show best practice when leading outstanding Computing across a primary school was excellent. https://www.computingatschool.org.uk/leading-computing/primary-leaders-toolkit

After looking around and dipping in and out of a variety of talks and getting some interesting freebies, I found myself spending most of my day at the Esports arena. I found it interesting how the Esports movement is growing nationally within schools, with the global industry worth 350 billion dollars. This is where I discovered level 2 and 3 BTEC qualification in Esports, where the courses offered a unique mix of Computing, Business, Creativity and PE (https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/btec-nationals/esports.html ). Chatting with the British Esports and watching pupils compete in the aren made me reflect and think about the benefits an Esports club could offer pupils within my School (https://britishesports.org/ ). Over the next term I definitely will be introducing an Esports club and getting some tournaments up and running.   

Amazon Web Services (AWS) education offer looks interesting for KS4 and KS5 pupils and teaching staff to upskill in cloud technologies. Through free resources, labs and training on their AWS Academy platform which is self learning at your own pace. https://aws.amazon.com/training/awsacademy/?nc2=sb_ep_aca 

Chatting to the team at Code for Life (https://www.codeforlife.education/) was also very positive about the free, easy-to-use resource they offer. This is through two fun coding games, which increase in difficulty all the way to Python programming which are aimed at KS1 to KS3/4. The games are aligned with the computing curriculum, which makes it super easy to include within your day to day teaching. This is something I will definitely be trying during the summer term within my KS3 classes. 

Overall I really enjoyed this year at BETT, where I came away recharged with new ideas to implement within my teaching. 

Looking forward to next year's BETT already ….