News & Views
Report from BETT, the UK's Educational Technology Show (Day 1)
By Terry Freedman
Wed, 11 Jan 2006, 23:50

Today was the start of the BETT show in London, the foremost educational technology show in the UK. I was hoping to report this from the show itself, but unfortunately I just could not for the life of me remember the URL of my blog admin! So, this is a little late, but I hope still useful. The show continues through till Saturday.

As is traditionally the case, the show was officially opened by the Secretary of State for Education, who for the second year running is Ruth Kelly. So what did she have to say?

To summarise, she identified 4 priority areas for the next year and beyond:

• Every Child Matters
• Parental involvement
• 14-19
• Personalised learning

Here are some more details under each of these headings:

Every Child Matters
By 2010, 3500 SureStart children's centres are to be established around the country in order to provide good quality integrated services to children under five and their families.

All schools are to offer extended access to services, to ensure that no child falls behind.

Parental involvement
Parents will be kept better informed about their child's school by the online publication of the new School Profile, which replaces the Governors' Report. This gives a one page snapshot of the school.

Schools are also encouraged to grant parents access to the information management system so that they can check whether their child has turned up for school today, see how their children are doing, and look at what homework has been set.

14-19
The new national entitlement and its implementation plan were mentioned, which gives young people a choice of learning pathways. See:

For these aims to be realised, e-learning was fundamental, for example in the use of e-portfolios. Collaboration and partnership were essential.

Personalised learning
One million children in the UK do not have access to the internet from home,

Becta is planning to review the issue of computer software licences (for use at home, presumably).

The importance of data was also emphasised:

Firstly, the better data now available now that the PANDA and PAT have been merged.

Secondly, the collaboration between the government and the British Standards Institute to establish e-learning standards.

Thirdly, governance arrangements will be established to ensure that the data used by schools is of the highest standard

She also stated that technology can help teachers and others make smarter use of data.

As usual, the Secretary of State set some challenges:

1. To build on the work being undertaken by Becta of advice and procurement, in which context learning platforms were essential.

2. To support school leadership teams to ensure that ICT is embedded in children's services.

3. To extend personalised learning to all through blended learning approaches.

Finally, she started off by saying that last year she set Becta the challenge of developing a national quality standard for schools, and this year she is delighted to say that the first 20 schools will receive the ICT Mark at the BETT show.

Other stuff
To be honest, what with attending the Secretary of State's speech, going to the RM lunch, and co-presenting a seminar on e-learning for the British Computer Society (which I hope to report on sometime soon), plus, of course, the catching-up with old friends, there wasn't much time to see anything else. Good places to visit are:

Moodle, at stand SW154: remarkable because a group of Moodle enthusiasts managed to get the sponsorship and support required to acquire a stand at the show. They're not only keen, but helpful too!

The Naace stand at X20 (but then I would say that, being vice-chair of Naace!)

The British Computer Society stand at G51

Hopefully, I'll be able to post another tomorrow. If you're going, it won't be too late to follow some of the advice I included in my recent Guardian article, A Survival Guide to the Show. To read that online, go to:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1682472,00.html and then scroll down to A Survival Guide to the Show.

© Terry Freedman Wed, 11 Jan 2006