BETT 2012: Pick of the best

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1 BETT 2012: Pick of the best Bett 2012 opened with Michael Gove s announcement about the curriculum shakeup for ICT which, from September, will be replaced by a flexible curriculum in Computer Science and programming. Speaking at the BETT show, Mr Gove announced plans to free up schools to use curricula and teaching resources that properly equip pupils for the 21st century. He said that resources, developed by experts, were already available online to help schools teach Computer Science and he wants universities and businesses to devise new courses and exams, particularly a new computing GCSE. Here, we present BETT award winners, and some of the best new products and services presented at BETT 2012 ParentMail ParentMail, the school-to-home communication and payments service has won the ICT Leadership and Management Solutions award at the BETT Awards ParentMail is today used by over 5,000 schools to communicate more than 10 million messages to 3.5 million parents a month. Its web-based system allows schools to send or text messages to parents, collect online payments for trips and dinner money, sell items through a school shop, and communicate pupil absence, as well as much more. Autumn 2011 saw the launch of the 1.5 million, next-generation ParentMail 2 and innovative ParentMail smart phone app that allows parents to manage their children s busy schedules on the go. The judges, including key government agencies, teachers and local authority representatives, said; This product seems to have addressed the communication needs of schools and also made the link between this aspect of school life and the management of income from children and families. Elements such as the app to support parents interaction with the school and tracking of their financial commitment to the school is certainly leading edge and is definitely customer focused. Groupcall named ICT Company of the Year Groupcall was awarded the prestigious title of ICT Company of the Year at the BETT 2012 Awards gala dinner. This year the judging panel was made up of 35 education professionals and ICT experts the British Education Suppliers Association (BESA) acted as the chair of judges.

2 Lawrence Royston, managing director, Groupcall, said: Our initial aim was to improve general and emergency communication between a school and its parents; we have achieved this as well as improving parental engagement and lowering school costs. Groupcall is one of the education sector market leaders with its parental communication system, Groupcall Messenger, which is currently used in more than 2,500 schools throughout the UK and Europe. Oddizzi Oddizzi has won the Primary Digital Content award at the 2012 BETT Award. Oddizzi is a captivating and engaging new cross curricular teaching resource designed to bring the world to life for Early Years Foundation stage, KS 1 and KS 2 pupils. Oddizzi comprises an interactive map, a live news feed, 500 pages of fresh and lively content written by teachers and travel writers, games and a tool that enables pupils to communicate with classrooms around the world. With strong cross curricular links, Oddizzi also covers areas of the curriculum such as Global Awareness, Language, Art and Literacy. Historic school brings parent comms into 21st century Concept4 unveiled a pioneering website and intelligent digital prospectus at BETT. The company, which has over 35 years experience in providing marketing solutions for education, health and private sector organisations, was commissioned by Loretto, Scotland s oldest boarding school, to bring its parent and student communications into the 21st century. Working closely with the school and its parents, Concept4 s digital team have developed an interactive website, which has multiple news feeds and events calendars, a Google Earth sitemap, 360 tours of the school, blogs, e-newsletter creation, its own iplayer and media centre to house videos, audio and photo galleries. One of many features to enhance user experience is the ability to personalise your homepage content on repeat visits. And Concept4 developed their own innovative Content Management System (CMS), Content4, that includes news, events and fixtures importing and publishing, drag and drop form creation and reporting, integration with the school s YouTube channel and Flickr photo galleries, direct push to Facebook and Twitter and masses of content, video and imagery, all controlled from a simple administration interface. But the centrepiece is the school s personal prospectus, which is a first in tailoring the visitor s experience be they a prospective parent or potential student, golf academy trainee or interested overseas boarder. On choosing your preferences, the journey is tailored in text, video and photo gallery content, culminating in a personal prospectus PDF. This provides highly targeted marketing data for the school and enables them to respond appropriately to enquiries. Analytics on the prospectus allows the school to see what has been viewed and when, so they can fine tune and tailor the content over time to maximise the visitor experience. You can view the Loretto website here:

3 Panasonic UB-T580 a new touch sensitive whiteboard Panasonic has announced a new touch sensitive whiteboard called UB-T580, designed to simplify teachers and pupil s experience and increase access to interactive and touch sensitive technologies at school. Powered by a simple USB cable connection with the teacher s PC, UB-T580 Panaboard is easy to operate. You can either use a finger or a stylus pen to write on its surface. Using Windows 7 allows teacher or students greater control over the images on screen, with pictures being easily manipulated by the touch of a finger or enlarged by stretching and pinching. In addition to its free downloadable software, UB-T580 comes with Easiteach education application for creating and editing teaching materials. Easiteach includes more than 4,800 resources, text to speech capabilities, multilingual handwriting recognition, a cloze tool for creating activities that contain sentences with missing words and tools for resizing of objects and shapes. All activities can be saved as jpegs, PDFs or in other common file formats. Mytutor BETT 2012 saw the launch of the UK s first online, interactive, one-to-one tuition service for 7-14 year olds. Called mytutor, it is the first in the UK to offer live, online one-to-one tuition specifically for Key Stage 2 and 3 maths and English. Almost a quarter (22%) of students in England have some form of private tuition at one time or another during their school years, but too few do so early enough to make a significant positive difference to their school careers. By intervening early, at between the ages of seven and 14, carefully tailored tuition can equip learners with the skills and confidence they need to get the best out of their education, before they enter Key Stage 4. Mytutor gives learners the focused help they need, but also develops new skills in the tutor as well, which they can then take back into the classroom. This is done by giving tutors ready access to a pool of learners from across the UK, then supporting them with extra training and by taking care of all the paperwork involved in billing and collecting payments from parents. The service will connect children seeking extra help in maths and English with tutors all over the country. With mytutor, current, former, newly qualified or final term student teachers will be able to use and develop their skills, gaining new experience and bringing in some extra cash while helping children to learn maths and English from home. Livescribe smartpens Livescribe smartpens are currently being used by over 34,000 educators, across the USA and in 3,500 school districts. Educators and students are finding that use of the smartpens are not only increasing student achievement without the burden of any increased instructional time from teachers, but are also of great advantage for SEN students and assessors. Livescribe smartpens are now available in the UK. Smartpens allow users to capture words, diagrams, scribbles, symbols and audio, matching everything you hear with what you write. The recording a playable pencast PDF file can be posted online on the MyLivescribe portal, or on school s intranet or website (they can also be sent to mobile devices and ipads), so students can review lessons or areas they find difficult. Students can even jump to the place in a lesson they want to review simply by tapping on the corresponding note. Key smartpen uses include: Posting lessons to a school s Learning Management System so students can

4 access them for unlimited review Flipping lessons assigning the pencast for homework so students can watch it as many times as necessary. Class time is then spent tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching and collaborating Substitute Lessons if you or a student is absent, meaningful instruction can be delivered through pencasting Homework helpers students often ask the same questions pencasts online provide a link for students to find the answers themselves Student Pencasts students produce multimedia representation demonstrating what they learned Professional development (with the presenter s permission) sharing training, conferences with other teachers Mentoring programmes sharing or best practices, lesson ideas and classroom management techniques Livescribe education website: Fuse digital visualiser Given that students have an average attention span of just 10 minutes, engaging them and maintaining that engagement is a constant challenge for educators. A challenge that s made even harder when books have to be shared between small groups, or a single copy passed around the room. Helping teachers to combat this problem, PolyVision demonstrated its fuse digital visualiser at BETT The fuse digital visualiser combines a high-resolution document camera, web camera and scanner in a single, compact solution. Fuse enables distance learning by providing high-resolution video, and facilitates the capturing and displaying of documents and real-time annotations by educators. Unique to fuse is PolyVision s patented TrueSnap technology which automatically rotates documents, eliminates the bend caused by book-binding and provides instant high-contrast photocopies with one press of a button on the user-friendly control panel. Flexible and cost-effective, fuse s multi-function capabilities minimise paper usage and eliminate expensive power requirements with one simple USB connection. Intuitive functionality is available through the icon strip which provides teachers with the flexibility to record, scan or resize images directly from the interactive whiteboard. New Worlds of Learning For the past few years the eminent Professor Stephen Heppell of Heppell. net has brought many new learning concepts into the central feature area at BETT. His work in schools across the world ensures that this dynamic and energetic area of the show will give educators a fresh view of what is possible in education globally. Taking place on the show floor at BETT this year, New Worlds of Learning was centred on the wise and wired children of Hounslow s Lampton School. Live on the stand, school children questioned and collaborated with other video-linked schools across the world to identify effective ingredients of learning. They then put these new ideas directly into practice at BETT in some bespoke projects including: Humanities The students used an app to research local communities, gather a rich mix of data through handheld devices, while exploring historical, demographic and cultural changes.

5 Applied science Using crystal growing kits the students shared their insights and conclusions with students in other countries, via a shared blog space. The New Worlds of Learning feature also showcased BETT Witnesses, BETT Explorers and BETT Radio. The idea of BETT Witnesses considered the advantages and disadvantages of the breadth of schools which make up today s education system. Academies, studio schools, university technical colleges, independent schools, foundation or free schools, schools within schools, local authority schools, lab schools and many more, make up our current day education system. BETT Witnesses from a variety of educational establishments discussed a published schedule of topics, about their vision for learning, and about the role of ICT in that vision. Meanwhile, BETT Explorers, who are all from Lampton School, reviewed a range of products put forward by a selection of companies at BETT. The students, who were all very aware of learning pedagogy, toured the show, tasked with offering their own unique students eye view of effective and engaging ways to use these new products in day to day learning. BETT Award Winners 2012 Organised and managed by Emap and BESA (The British Educational Suppliers Association), the annual BETT Awards aims to recognise, reward and celebrate ICT excellence within the education sector by honouring outstanding resources and learning solutions developed by educational suppliers. Entries to the BETT Awards were judged by over 50 education professionals to ensure a fair and meticulous process. Winners of the 14th annual BETT Awards 2012 are: 2012 BETT Award Winners Category Company Product ICT Company of the Year less than 1million turnover ICT Company of the Year 1million to 3million turnover Radiowaves Schools Ltd. Groupcall

6 ICT Company of the Year - over 3million turnover Early Years ITV SignPost ITV Baby Sign ICT Exporter of the Year Northgate Managed Services EducationCity.com Digital Devices Secondary Digital Content Lumens Digital Optics Inc. Twig World Ltd Lumens DC120 Wireless Visualiser Twig Science ICT Service and Support Joskos Solutions ICT SEN Solutions Innovation Forcentenco VOICEYE ICT Leadership and Management Solutions ParentMail ParentMail HapTEL Virtual Dental Chair Kings College London The Dental Institute Tools Outstanding achievement Just2easy J2Webby Merlin John Primary Digital Content Oddizzi Oddizzi Digital Collections OUP Oxford Owl

7 Suppliers and Support Services SUPPLIERS INDEX.. suppliers and products mentioned in this edition at a glance Escape Story As a young girl Eva Erben was suddenly forced by the Nazis to leave her home in Prague to join, with her parents, one of the transports to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The nightmare that followed is told by Eva as a young girl struggling to cope with the fear and danger that becomes part of her world. This child s view of the Holocaust is a unique and moving story as well as an important historical record. Professional Learning Community A world of CPD knowledge and skills. To create a truly professional learning community in your school every leader and teacher should have access to the information they need to develop the knowledge and skills for their role. Magazines and journals and online information services to support the school leadership team and professional learning for the whole staff. professionallearningcommunity.htm Using art to develop creative and critical thinking Learning Without Limits 1 How to challenge and involve pupils of all abilities by teaching the key skills of critical and creative thinking through paintings, pictures and prints. Price: inc vat includes whole school licence so you can place it on your virtual learning environment The materials in this pack will help all teachers to: The components of Learning Without Limits - the book, CD and laminated images have been designed as a practical coaching manual that helps teachers and children understand and apply the core principles of critical and creative thinking to lessons they have already planned, within and beyond the National Curriculum. Connect children directly with a picture or painting Give children a personalised starting point for learning Get children asking authentic questions (the questions they really want to ask and answer) Encourage exploratory talking and thinking Start the processes of critical and creative thinking Build confidence in making judgements, taking decisions and making choices Explore six techniques in detail and learn how to apply these to lessons they have already planned Refine and adapt the techniques to meet the needs of specific groups of pupils including able learners Order Hotline: Intelligent Learning hat sort of teaching allows Wstudents to take ownership of their own learning? What will motivate and excite children s curiosity and haul them out of passivity? What style of teaching will develop their intellectual skills to the point that they can become effective agents of enquiry in any field? How can we make lessons exciting and creative for students and teachers? Motivating students to become independent and effective learners. Written and presented By Steve Williams Acclaimed by the NUT These questions are the golden grails of modern teaching. The government has sought to address them by numerous initiatives But none of these initiatives have succeeded as they might have done because they ignore the key question. What sort of teaching is needed to achieve these goals? Intelligent Learning is a teaching practice course, executed through six half hour video sessions, which address in detail the changes in pedagogy you and your school need to introduce to start addressing the issues of motivation and becoming a thinking and learning community. The central theme of the course is to give students the skills to ask more and searching questions. it s the questioning skills, not of the teacher but of the student that really counts in developing their cognitive abilities In the pack are: Six half hour videos on DVD Supporting guides for each video, written by programme users in schools themselves A CD of supporting articles and materials to stimulate professional development and curriculum design All for less than the cost of one consultant for one day or one teacher on a one day course! Is there a better CPD spend than this? Great ideas for encouraging questioning will use them in the classroom. and engagement. Their questions dominate the learning agenda and the ownership of learning follows. At the end of the course teachers will have the skills and practical strategies to: facilitate more and more sophisticated student questioning support children in using concepts to organise their thinking manage dialogue and discussion to develop children s ideas plan lessons and study programmes that promotes questioning and dialogue create communities of enquiry in their classroom Price: vat Very positive. It helps me understand how I can develop effective questioning within my classroom lots of ideas which I shall try. North Tyneside EAZ Network Learning Community To order call: or Fax orders: