BETT 09

Friday 16^th January I visited the BETT show in London’s Olympia. It is always exciting and exhausting, today was no exception.

Highspots:

• I picked up the 2Simple 2DIY which I have been waiting for since I saw a demo before Christmas – will write about it soon
  
• I saw and played with SMART Tables – interesting, not sure how much they cost but putting a SMARTBoard flat on a table with a projector pointing down will give a similar effect so my reaction to that will depend largely on price and value for money in comparison with a SMARTBoard.
  
• Seeing RM’s 3D projector was intriguing. It works by polarisation and you have to wear glasses to see it but the effect is amazing. We watched a scientific film of molecules changing shape, position, possibly being created (not sure on that one – may not have understood what I was seeing) and had the film had audio so that I could have understood it all clearly it would have been an amazing learning tool.
  
• I looked at a fair number of language learning resources. All primary schools it the UK have to implement their language teaching program by 2010 so it is something that crops up in conversation with schools every day. I will write about what I find from the review of these programs later.
  
• Looked at the new Go Aces - and found out here is an open source program to make them with :-) Got the new ones being sent on for me to play with!
• Brought some new SMART maths resources back – have not looked at them yet, but will be useful with the new learning platform!
• Heard about the SMART bracelet – a USB bracelet worn by pupils to take SMART Board notebooks home for homework and enables the work to be stored back to the stick to bring it back to school. Seems expensive – pupils are paying for the use of the software at home - but may work out useful!
• I saw, and was very impressed by ipod suites for language learning!
• I bought Eurotalk Interactive – Learn Spanish Intermediate – for me! To try to continue learning Spanish J
  

It was a good, but exhausting day, not helped by a power outage at Didcot Parkway – so problems returning home on the train and ended up at a different station to where the car was parked – all good fun!