BETT Show pictures

BETT Trip to London

BETT {January 22 – 25^th 2014} 30^th Anniversary

It’s the global meeting place or the education technology community, offering first-hand knowledge and advice from the industry’s innovative figures. (BETT website)

“The only place where you can hear from the biggest names in education”

Award winning interactive solutions for any classroom, video conferencing for learning, forums, speed learning, live learning, SEN learning, school leader’s summit, games, learning support, school management, HE and Work Place learning.

All the different ‘stalls’ consisted of help towards: Maths, Science, English, Foreign Languages, SEN, ICT and Media.

Short talks from:

• Teach First
• Hampshire Academy
• Ipswich Academy
• Eton College
• Founder of 100 Word Challenge
• West London Free School
• Plymouth University
• City University of London
• Education Innovation Centre, UWE
• Open University
• University of Birmingham
• Donald Clark, CEO of Epic
• Charles Jennings, Founder of 70:20:10 Forum
• Mike Thompson, Head of Employability for Barclays Bank
• Top Right Group
• VISA Europe

One of the main thing that I noticed was there were lots of ‘stalls’ that contained interactive white boards, touch screen boards/computers etc. They all seemed very similar but very popular.

I did enjoy walking around the different areas as I haven’t been to anything like it before, but I did find it a bit monotonous (There was a lot of the same thing).

Hopscotch animations - fading octopus

Our session today was about the application Hopscotch! We had to use coding to create different things e.g: a square or a triangle or a house. I found this extremely frustrating and difficult to do. I did not understnd the theory behind it and the different controls, it also had elements of maths in it which i found hard to work out the angles etc. Didn't really enjoy the session as it stressed me out, even though i completed the tasks i couldn't do it by myself without help. https://community.gethopscotch.com/projects/fading-octopus-nos0yh24x12gqkzttilu-q

Scratch parrot animation

Today, we found the Scratch animation programme online and mandy went through it on the board step by step (which i found a lot easier to understand than copying a handbook!) I then looked through the different images and picked a monkey, chose a nature/park bench background then programmed it to walk a few steps, jump on the table and look excited/ However, Mandy and i then discovered that the functions were complicated compared to other images. So, i then changed the image to a parrot, did the same actions then have the parrot then for it to make a sound. Overall, i enjoyed this Scratch lesson a lot more than the last one for sure!

Gaming lesson (Create a lesson based on a game)

In our last session before Christmas we spent it discussing the Games Day that we had a few weeks previous, going over what we thought of it, the purpose etc. Mandy then explained how a lesson plan is created, what sections there are, learning objectives etc.

We then read through our evaluations of the games played on the gaming day, selected an activity to develop into a whole class lesson.  We had to discuss what learning opportunities we wished to develop and what subject we wanted to pursue. After that we presented our ideas to the class.

Scratch

I would describe Scratch as a sort of game that you can play on the computer, which consists of programming stories, games, animations etc. The age group would be roughly between 8 and 16 years.

"Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively; which are essential skills for life in the 21st century" (Scratch website)

It is used in education all over the world and is cross curricular, you can incorporate it into science, maths, English and obviously I.T.


Mandy showed us an introduction video to it, although I was familiar with it as they talked about it in Technocamps. She then gave us a step by step guide and we had to create our own animation based on set instructions.

I have to say that at first I found it really difficult, could not grasp it at all! It took me quite a while to understand the steps involved, but as I got it I found it easier to do it. I still found it hard but I understood the point of it and the outcome.

Scratch is a very useful tool to use throughout the curriculum and increases a child's computer literacy greatly!

TechnoCamps

Today I took part in the Technocamps conference in the Liberty Stadium, it was called: Computer Science Teachers Conference in collaboration with Technocamps 'Creating a Digital Future'- The transition to Key Stage 3.

Technocamps provides free workshops to give you the chance to learn new skills about the world of Computer Science and STEM. It's a project that provides free workshops to young people on programming, robotics, game design, app development and much more and about getting young people (11-19 years) in Wales excited about Computer Science and STEM and challenging them to think about the world around them in a different way.

Whilst there I observed two workshops, the first was about the science or higher order thinking behind card tricks, and how you can train yourself (with specific rules) to always know the answer to the tricks. The second was CoderDojo which was a computer coding group, where you had to accomplish different levels of coding to finish the game. I enjoyed the card tricks the most as it was fun and easy to understand, I didn't enjoy Coderdojo as much because I found it difficult to understand as, to me, it was a complicated process.

Overall, I enjoyed the workshops/observations but there was too many talks/speeches.