Just got back from BETT so thought I would share some of my observations and thoughts.
- Insane numbers of new ‘Interactive Whiteboards’ were on offer. Some boasted the ability to interact on any projected surface, others were just enormous touchscreen LCD displays. Perhaps the ‘SMART’ stranglehold is loosening? Certainly the market seems ripe for disruption.
- Many stalls were running Macs, even if not particularly selling Apple products. Saw quite a few Keynote presentations running too…
- iPads seemed to be the prize of choice in competitions.
- Not a huge amount of software on sale but certainly lots of ‘cloud’ or web offerings.
- Multiple laptop/iPad trolleys/flight cases. Expensive though!
We also visited several demos of iPads and what you can do with them. There are lots of cool apps out there that I didn’t know about so will hopefully get to try them out soon. 1-1 deployment seems to be the holy grail, but many schools are settling for a class set that can be shared around a school. The demos were not always of the highest quality though; perhaps I’m spoilt by watching too many flawless Stevenote software demos?
Wireless access for iPads is an important consideration as well. Running a couple of devices from a cheap wifi point is one things, but 30 devices trying to access the network is a whole new ball game. It seems like it is very easy to spend £10k on doing the job properly! Needs more research…
I am interested what else I’ll learn at the Apple Education Summit tomorrow. It will certainly be fun to try things out!
Primary ICT 