The UK’s largest education technology show is back at Olympia on 13­-16 January. Despite the possibility that public sector deals may soon shrink, the 25th Bett show remains a likely information and networking source for opportunities that remain.

And it will, according to organisers, represent edutainment at its best. Richard Joslin, exhibitions director at organiser Emap Connect, says feedback from the education sector has put pupil engagement issues at the heart of some of today’s challenges for educators.

“The central feature at Bett 2010 aims at addressing and reflecting this by offering up a view on how pupil engagement can be addressed through playful learning or learning through games technologies,” Joslin says.

The feature, Professor Stephen Heppell’s Playful Learning zone, will be a fully interactive area allowing visitors to immerse themselves in educational gaming at its best. According to the organisers, educational gaming is a key way to help teachers get students interested and involved with lessons.

The zone builds on the key feature zone Learning Elsewhere at the 2009 show, which demonstrated how to take education out of the classroom. Playful Learning will incorporate live demonstrations and a chance to play new educational games.

“Survey after survey suggests that our UK schoolchildren may be some of the least happy in Europe,” Heppell says in a statement provided by Bett.

Real-world education
Educational games can involve running through real woods on a worldwide team and problem-solving via GPS. They are not just about playing computer games, Heppell adds.

About 30,000 visitors and 700 exhibitors came to Bett in 2009. Outside the educational zones and seminars, VARs can discover the diverse hardware, software, and services available for schools.

Canadian interactive whiteboard vendor TeamBoard will be at the show punting for partners. Peter Olsson, business development manager for TeamBoard Europe, asks VARs to visit him on Stand H30.

“Featured on the stand will be the company’s full portfolio of products, including the TeamBoard Total Mobile Solution, a fully mobile interactive whiteboard stand that enables users to integrate our IWB and projector into one mobile, slim, adjustable unit,” he said.

TeamBoard claims its products are differentiated by solid construction, a 10-year warranty on their surfaces, and finger-sensitive technology, dispensing with the need for special connectors or styli.

Old favourite Smart Technologies is back again, displaying various new products that complement interactive classroom technologies.

Smart will show its new notebook maths software, which has seen 20,000 downloads in beta and provides content creation tools that are able to recognise and graph equations in real time during a lesson.

It will also showcase an interactive response system, Smart Response LE, targeting younger children. A new wireless slate, online notebook software, ultra-short-throw IWB system, widescreen interactive pen display, and touch-sensitive IWBs will be on show also.

The Bett Awards 2010 list no less than 38 nominees for education technology excellence ­ some of which will surely prove profitable for the savvy VAR targeting the schools market.

They include Get Revising, an application by a UK-based developer of the same name that helps students revise better for their GCSEs, A-levels, and other crucial exams, as well as TTS Group’s Chatter-Block and Attention Tracker programs for special-needs students.

Not all about education specialists
Of course, it isn’t all about traditional education specialists. D-Link, for example, will be unveiling its latest IP surveillance technologies, and trying to convince attendees it has the best options for schools seeking an affordable and feature-rich surveillance network.

It will demonstrate its DES-7200 multi-layer modular switch system, a next-generation, chassis-based switch targeting larger campuses.

Cables to Go will also be showing technology such as its wireless VGA
transmitter, which it claims is highly suited to the education market.

Bettshow 2010 information
www.bettshow.com