All the fun of the fair

The 28th annual Bett show promoted global collaboration and gaming technology in schools this year and beyond.

Weaving under and above all the language-learning apps, numeracy software and interactive displays at the world's largest education technology show this year were two themes: make learning more fun, and encourage students to collaborate with others worldwide.

An estimated 650 exhibitors and 30,000 visitors over the four days from 11 to 14 January attended Bett 2012. Stands seemed larger than before - perhaps obscuring the fact that 50 fewer exhibitors, down from 2011's 700, were predicted in pre-show materials from the organiser, Emap Connect.

Debbie French, event director for Bett, said the show's focus this year is "most appropriate" given the importance of considering issues globally and collaborating more broadly both at schools and in the workplace. Meanwhile, schools are strugglingto engage pupils with an ever wider and more diverse curriculum, she said.

Worldwide approach to learning

"Each year, learning is becoming increasingly global," French said. "And we once again have an esteemed figure, Professor Stephen Heppell, on board to bring his unique knowledge of international learning to the central feature."

Schoolchildren staffed the stand for the central feature, called New Worlds of Learning, collaborating live by video link with schools elsewhere in the world on a project to identify the essential ingredients for effective learning. The idea is to be able to share best practice from various diverse learning environments.

The LearnLive seminar programme was split into free sessions and those charging £15 per person per 45-minute seminar. The four tracks from which attendees could choose were ICT Learning and Teaching, ICT Buying and Integrating, Leaders, and SEN (special educational needs). These were held in an open area, so even if the session was full, people walking past could stand outside and listen.

Emap was contacted through its PR company during the show for information on how many attendees had indicated they would pay the £15 charge. The firm was also asked why it chooses to levy a charge. Emap responded by saying it had always charged a fee, but did not elaborate.

CRN counted 62 LearnLive sessions carrying a £15 charge per person, per session, to reserve a place, and 25 free sessions.

French said that teaching is one of the few professions that does not provide mandatory training and development after initial qualification. "[So] the Bett team works closely with the sector's key stakeholders each year to design a seminar programme that is practical, relevant and applicable to their current roles or career aspirations," she said.

Some exhibitors held free seminars at their individual stands.

Pre-registration numbers reported online by education technology vendor Merlin John suggest attendance might turn out to be as much as 8.6 per cent higher in 2012 than in 2011, with about 70 per cent of those attending expected to hail from the UK.

Martine Dodwell-Bennett, sales and marketing director at education-focused distributor Steljes, told CRN on day two that the show seemed busy, and that there were lots of international visitors, particularly on day one. "The first day is usually quieter and Thursday is usually the busiest," she said.

She claimed she had fielded a lot of leads by day two, adding that people seemed far readier to buy this year than last year - an encouraging sign for the reseller channel, which Dodwell-Bennett also admitted is finding things rather tough.

"A lot are talking about the BenQ lampless projector - which will compete with Casio's," she added. "Budgets will carry on being stretched but people are carrying on spending, whereas last year they were not. Last year, they were just seeing what is out there in the market, but were not ready to buy."

Many of the usual suspects were out in force with a stand, including RM, Stone Group, Viglen and Equanet as well as interactive whiteboard vendors such as Smart Technologies and Promethean.

Smart introduced its first interactive projector for education, the LightRaise 40wi, 3D tools for Smart notebooks, and interactive features for its 800 series interactive whiteboards (IWBs) and 8070i interactive displays (pictured, left). Main rival Promethean unveiled an interactive table, showcased its Promethean Planet global IWB community, and looked at how its offerings could directly help with the problems teachers face.

Green means savings

Cassie Winterburn, account manager for schools at Stone Computers, said the stand was punting in particular its new eco-PC, which is tipped for a March launch.

"Obviously, if it is green, you can achieve cost savings as well," Winterburn said. "The mini-ITX version using an Iiyama monitor has 8GB of DDR memory, and uses 24 per cent less power than a standard desktop."

Winterburn added that the ongoing impact of the public sector cuts will ensure that education customers must pay more attention to cost savings, and to technology that can deliver them, freeing up resources for other things.

Stone published a white paper in December examining the outlook for education technology sales in 2012. The company found that most schools - 83 per cent - believe there will be less money for IT in 2012/13 but that respondents indicated more need than ever for IT in the classroom. Stone concluded that the time may be ripe to consider new ways for schools and the channel to finance education deals.

With that in mind, it launched a rental PC scheme at the Bett show. As reported on ChannelWeb, the leasing plan aims at enabling educational establishments to classify PC funding as an operational expense rather than capex. Managed services can also be bundled in.

"They [customers] sign up for three years, but after 12 months - if they give three months' notice - they can end it," said Winterburn.

Stone's research also found that a quarter of respondents had never considered using alternative financing arrangements to facilitate IT spend. "Thirteen per cent were entirely unaware of the existence [of such financing]," its report read.

The busiest-seeming stand of the show, replete with fake grass and trees as well as the ubiquitous giant screens and multimedia presentations, belonged to Google, which took up a commanding position in the larger hall downstairs.

The online services giant packed delegates into its presentations, aiming to entertain with loud music clips and videos from the likes of Lady Gaga, and a drinks "lab" serving "scientific" concoctions including Curie's Cordial, Pasteur's Potion and Darwin's Distillation.

Unsurprisingly, the behemoth was heavily promoting its cloud offering, Google Apps, which is familiar to many students who use Gmail. It was also publicising its Chromebooks notebooks, which use Google's own OS, allowing integration with Google Apps, promoted as allowing pupils globally to collaborate more easily.

"Google Apps have a guaranteed uptime of 99.9 per cent, so staff can support teaching, learning, and research better," Google claimed in its on-stand promotional material. "There is no software to install, and no hardware to purchase."

The biggest technological themes were interactive projection, cloud computing, and information management, with undertones of 3D technology for the classroom; space, cost and power-saving kit; and bigger, brighter, better displays and printing offerings.

Gardening technology?

Perhaps the most unexpected stand belonged to Norseman, which featured a range of gardening boxes and the like from its portfolio of trolleys, storage racks, bird feeders and similar.

In terms of hardware, the new ultrabook form factor was on show, including at HP's stand. The black glass HP Envy 14 Spectre ultrabook (pictured, above), aimed at creative applications such as Photoshop, "defies conventional notebook design", according to the vendor.

It is 20mm thick, weighs 1.8kg, and uses materials normally found in smartphones, music players and full-sized LCDs. It has been designed to fit a 14in screen inside a 13.3in body.

According to HP, this means that content can be stretched across the screen to provide higher resolution and richer colour, along with wider viewing angles.

Canon was one of several major vendors at the expo to showcase large-format printers. Ryan Briscoe, account manager at Canon partner Condor Office Solutions, said schools are buying the large-format printers for the opportunity to print posters and the like at reduced cost. Some can print on various high-quality media, including canvas.

"We are doing quite well, actually. We have a sales guy going to schools on a daily basis and we are starting to get some customers for this large-format technology in the schools," Briscoe said.

"We have also sold some to colleges, universities and football clubs."

Schools are finding they can save money by being able to do higher-quality, large-format runs in-house, Briscoe confirmed.

Cost savings and services management around print hardware would remain key, he suggested.

On its stand, Ramsac also focused on the need for schools to save money. Its technical director, Paul Mew, reiterated in a statement put out at Bett that education as a whole is being forced to do more with less in the coming year.

"Clearly, the first priority is to identify those areas where reduced expenditure will not affect the standard of teaching," Mew wrote.

Education customers should be encouraged to take a step back and assess what they already have and how to use it better - of course, channel tech providers are ideally placed to help schools here.

Virtualisation and better power management were two IT areas that could then easily be addressed to help schools make savings, he added. Another issue to encourage schools to look at is the tech refresh cycle. Sometimes, savings can be made by replacing some items of equipment earlier - and others later, Mew suggested.

Charging ahead

Security - not only of data and information but of hardware - was highlighted on a subset of stands.

There were also many vendors promoting kit for charging and managing mobile devices en masse, including LapSafe, which has shown at Bett for 12 consecutive years now.

LapSafe showed its Traveller charging cases and UnoCart syncing and charging trolleys for Nintendo consoles, iPads and laptops. Similar vendors displayed chargers suitable for recharging multiple laptops simultaneously.

Denise Cole, director at LapSafe, said the Bett show remains key for the company as a vendor: "It provides us with another opportunity to engage with educators and potential resellers to see how we can best meet their needs."

As usual, exhibitors at Bett hailed from all over the world - with the numbers present underlining perhaps that the IT industry too may slowly become more globalised.

The usual contingent of keen Chinese manufacturers and vendors were at the show, but CRN also noted stands from Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Romania, Sweden, Malaysia and Singapore. Most were seeking partners and resellers in the UK. Some - including the Malaysian contingent - were hoping also to attract UK businesses to their homelands.

In 2013, the Bett show is moving from Kensington Olympia to the ExCeL complex, near Greenwich in south-east London. According to Emap Connect, the fair has outgrown the space available for it at Olympia.