Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

Last year I asked whether BETT was where it was truly at, this year my doubts were swept away, not by the hundreds and thousands of products on show, but by the slow but sure “takeover” of teachers and educators in the back channel and fringe. Like Diagon alley all sorts of exciting things were going on invisible to the Muggle world. BETT 2010 was noteworthy for the presence of practitioners who through their commitment and sheer persistence began to infiltrate the world’s largest (according to Dominic Savage of BESA speaking at the Minister’s Address on the Wednesday morning) exhibition for educational ICT. Last year, I said,

“The essence of good learning, and therefore teaching, is the engagement of students within a context they can relate with. BETT is about the old-model ‘commercial’ world of educational ICT, while perhaps the really interesting stuff is being done elsewhere, with tools that typically cost nothing and by engaging learners within their ‘environment’. There is no formal exhibition or display for this type of activity except distributed on the web of course. The prospect of a ‘free BETT’ meeting on the fringes is tantalising …”

this year, three free evening events took place. On Wednesday there was TEDxOrenda organised by Drew Buddle (there’s a great running blog post by Joanna Jacobs if you need to catch up with the event). On Thursday there was AmplifiED’10, which took a barcamp approach, and on Friday the TeachMeet itself, all attracting important sponsors, including Becta for the last. But most significant of all was TeachMeet Takeover in which standholders donated 30 minutes or less to allow teachers to ‘takeover’ their stand to share inspiration for free. At the same time, Theo Kuchel’s and Leon Cych’s, with support from Mirandanet, live-streamed debates and interviews were perhaps of more use and impact than the seminar programme.

So what might this tell us about the way in which BETT, or indeed future conferences and exhibitions might go? It’s still early days, and perhaps any sort of prediction would be foolish. But one thing’s for sure, things are changing, and they are changing for ever. A number of BETT bloggers have already alluded to the theme I adopted last year, Bill Lord for example states,

“The disappointments for me were the further evidence that there is a disconnect between the corporate sector and the educationalists they are trying to sell to. No-one would believe that we are about to enter into one of the toughest times budget wise for primary schools in many years.”

One might say that the present government is counting on it. Just see my last post, item C, in which I quote, “Our vision for school improvement support is one where schools … have free access to high-quality CPD and training products, through the internet …”

Image credit: Danny Nicholson

Update:

It’s also perhaps interesting to note that the offers to TeachMeet Takeover were almost exclusively from commercial enterprises. Tom’s interesting reflections on the concept and learning points for next year spurred me to think that there are non-commercial standholders at BETT who should be supporting them, for example Becta and The National College to name just two.

Tags: bett2010, teachmeet, tmbett2010