BETT - Wednesday at the exhibition and dinner

On Wednesday we went out to the fair to take a look at what the vendors want to flog to us in 2016. At such a large fair it’s not easy to keep my concentration up for very long (for me) and it’s easy to miss the small booths in favour of the louder ones. Besides, we’re all there for different reasons and in different roles.

To be brief, there were quite a few systems and services aimed at the English market. Lots of monitoring. The ability to see whether your child has done their homework, get a notification on your phone when they are on the school bus, and the possibility to make school payments via apps, for example for school lunch and other paid items in England. The big companies were of course represented and Microsoft pushed Minecraft hard, apparently releasing a new education edition, to the great delight of all the pupils (who were there). Google also ran a bunch of keynotes about GAFE and its ecosystem and showcased Chromebooks.I’m personally most interested right now in seeing different kinds of creative tools, preferably connected to programming. There was a lot around Raspberry Pi’s, the BBC’s micro:bit with opportunities to try programming, and peripheral equipment. Lego has released its WeDo 2, which looks really fun with the possibility to work with these at even younger ages than their Mindstorms. Their booth was also very popular.I didn’t really see any showstoppers, but I did get a bit tempted by a pico projector, now that prices are starting to come down properly and the image is quite acceptable. It’s also nice to see that 3D printers are starting to drop in price.

Evening dinner

In the evening we went out to the venerable Gibson Hall for a lovely dinner with lots of pleasant meetings. I must say I’ve met so many interesting, nice people, surely thanks to having come alone. It actually forces me to step outside my comfort zone. However, I got reinforcement from Årstaskolan when Josef Sahlin came down with his students in Year 6, who on Thursday will be presenting at Nordic@Bett about Livsviktig Poesi.All in all it was a really nice event organised by DIU.After dinner it was time to go back to the hotel and start preparing Thursday’s work.