Dick Sblog

10 years ago, BETT was really interesting and there was a great sense of innovation in practice. For me, at least, the scale of the event was such that I could be guaranteed to meet friends from the UK and Europe and share their latest ideas. Then the developers took over and the balance shited into the commoditisation of practice – new systems, new products and hard sell. The last time I went (2006), I was really bored.

This year had more of a spark to it… Not that the pressures of the commercial world were absent, the stands were bigger and better, the cacophony of noise more intense – background chatter, the competing buzz of multiple presentations – and the flicker of big screens and whiteboards was everywhere in the main halls.

But something this year sparked my attention. Maybe it was having the chance to meet my old friend Max Buczynsky from King Edward VII School in Melton Mowbray, looking wasted after two days of presentations about Learner Voice, on Stephen Heppell’s stand, or meeting Jean Johnson, one of the very best of an inspiring group of European teachers who were involved in the Web for Schools project in the late ’90’s. Jean is now Chief Executive of the Inclusion Trust and, with her colleagues, is responsible for one of the very best facilities to appear out of the Web – notschool.

Notschool grew out of the work of Stephen Heppell and his colleagues at Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University. It is a national, Internet-based ‘Virtual Online Community’ offering an alternative to traditional education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, can no longer cope with school or with complementary provisions such as home tutoring or specialist units. It’s hugely successful and now firmly in the mainstream. So if you deal with (or have) kids who fit that description then you’re being professionally negligent if you are not aware of it!

Another spark was the opportunity to have a play with the RM Asus, the little Linux based machine that runs Open Office: it’s lovely. The feature it’s lacking, to my mind, is the ability to create a wireless mesh network – this would be a real enhancement for primary school applications where the kids tend to live in the same locality and piggy-backing across the mesh could provide internet access for those without it at home. Surprisingly, no-one on the stand was aware of this possibility, so I made the suggestion to a couple of them and to Nick Stacey, RM’s Marketing Director. I wonder…

On a related point, there were a number of suppliers offering thin-client technologies. Personally I think that this is where the future is heading – with software increasingly delivered as a service. That’s why the OLPC and Asus machines are so interesting to me – rather than pay lots for high-tech kit, children could have their own machine, offering wireless internet access to a wide range of applications delivered via the browser.

A couple of thin-client companies caught my eye (there will be more but I was too busy talking!): Netvoyager with its desktop box and ThinTables with their workstations and remotely hosted applications service. More time would have been useful; I’ll be prepared to bet that there will be more such services on offer next year.

I was very impressed by SuperClubsPlus - a secure social networking service for primary (6-12) and secondary (11-14) pupils and also by ParentMail - I’m thinking of trying to pursuade the two schools with which I am locally involved to adopt this; currently parent-school-parent email communications are a management nightmare. But then, most of the time, the technology isn’t the problem, it’s the kneejerk response of, ‘we can’t share addresses with the PTA because of the data-protection act’.

Another interesting technology application was IMJack, from Amteus, which provides secure communication across the school network, from a local, dedicated server. This can include external links such as partner schools, students at home and parents. All instant messaging communications are logged, students presence can be detected, VOIP calls can be made from the classroom. Well worth a look. It can even integrate with blackberry devices, though I personally hate the things