BETT2011

So another year, another BETT. Spent Thursday and most of Friday helping out on the Renaissance stand which was fun although nerve racking at times - the day is punctuated by the whack of Neo2s falling on the floor as colleagues demonstrate their durability. Friday afternoon at 3.45 I led a seminar on using social networking and web 2 to bring the world into your classroom, a subject I have spoken on many times so I should have been very confident but I wasn't - I was terrified! guess it was just because it was BETT , I had comforted myself that it would probably be poorly attended but then a friend came to tell me no, it was fully booked so that didn't help my nerves. In the end the session went really well with only 2 people leaving to answer phone calls and many people coming up to ask questions so I needn't have worried. Starting off with the excellent Gotta Keep Reading video helped I think! Spent some time with my friends at Rising Stars afterwards as they had sponsored the session and I was extremely impressed with their new Switched on ICT scheme, looks fantastic and I'm sure it will be popular. 
I managed to slip away several times for a quick look round and was very happy to meet up with Bryan and the other guys from Bee-it, such a great website and all free! Watched a session in the Heppel zone about using Facebook as a sort of out of hours advice service with staff having completely separate accounts from their personal ones and groups set up for Work Related Learning etc The idea of getting people from different profession to 'guest' on the groups each week and answer questions was brilliant, and it's always great to hear the student point of view too. Colleague I was with had a try of all the different seats in the zone - wasn't brave enough to sit on a dolphin myself! Had a quick look at the new Eclipse .net iphone app coming from Microlibrarian - as a geeky former librarian I want it!
Saturday was the day for looking around and I brought my long suffering husband with me (he later commented "never again" and remarked that if it was you first BETT as a member of school staff it must be completely overwhelming......yep!) . Enjoyed hearing Children's Laureate Anthony Browne speak on the Scholastic stand and good to reconnect with Mike from I Am Learning and see their iphone app which I think is going to be very popular. Good to hear they are now selling to parents too, I would have loved this for my kids. I was very impressed with My Big Campus from Lightspeed which gives power back to teachers by letting them unblock sites themselves and use youtube videos etc as well as setting up directed access for blocks of time. Students would love the Facebook/Twitter like aspects of Big Campus too. Apart from this I was a little disappointed this year - products shown seemed very samey and I didn't find much else that caught my eye. Sadly didn't get time to go to any of the Teachmeet Takeovers ;0( ......next year must try harder, sounded wonderful from the comments on Twitter.  I think many people only came for these awesome free demonstrations, probably not much money about this year but there are still diamonds hidden amongst the dross. Roll on next year!