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There’s no business like show business After another great BETT last month, Carrie Service gives us an overview of the new trends showcased at the event, and what to look out for in 2012
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ETT 2012 showcased some amazing new innovations in educational ICT, bringing intuitive, multifunctional technology to the forefront of education. With Gove announcing changes in the curriculum that could revolutionise the way schools teach ICT (or rather, computing), there was a real buzz and sense of excitement present at the show.
FOR RENT
One of the key trends that came up time and time again at the show, particularly when talking about managing schools’ budgets, was leasing. Leasing offers schools the opportunity to get hold of brand new technology without compromising budgets, and is something that can be utilised in pretty much every area of ICT, as John Botham from D-Link explains: “A lot of schools are using leases now; you can lease software, you can lease infrastructure, you can lease devices, you can lease anything.” Leasing your ICT equipment over a number of years with upgrade intervals allows you to utilise the best products out there in an affordable and sustainable way, and can really help schools who are struggling to “keep up with the Jones’s” as Botham puts it: “Schools have to continually retool, and renew to keep up…it’s keeping up with the Jones’s in a sense. Schools are competitive. Devices are [continually] changing.” Many schools in the past have invested in new equipment but been unable to maintain it, and leasing provides a good alternative for schools that have previously fallen into this trap. “Gone are the days when a vendor marches in, sells something, takes the cash away, and then leaves you to it,” says Botham. Leasing with a company provides you with on-going support and servicing, as opposed to
purchasing equipment outright and being left with the responsibility of sourcing help when things go wrong.
LET’S GET TOGETHER
Learning platforms bring together a whole range of resources used by schools into one easily accessible portal, allowing both students and teachers to access learning materials online. They have a wide range of benefits for schools, not only for the students themselves, but also for parents. With the pressures of everyday life making parenting increasingly demanding, being able to check up on your child’s progress at school at the click of a mouse can be a godsend. According to a survey commissioned by Pearson, 25% of parents do not have clear insight into their children’s progress at school. Many of the learning platforms showcased at BETT now integrate information from SIMS so that a child’s attendance and grades etc can be accessed by parents from home via the web, allowing them to monitor their child’s progress over the course of the year. Dylan Jones from Its Learning has noticed a lot of schools also choosing learning platforms as a way of cutting costs: “We’ve seen quite a big move to FE level and high school level to use learning platforms to lower their costs, it’s cloud-based so schools see that as cost saving, as they don’t have to employ so many technicians, they don’t have to buy hardware, it’s fully upgradable…it’s available twenty-four seven, 365 days a year… it also acts as a supplement to teaching, which allows them to drive some revenue streams from out of hours teaching.” Bob Moore from Dell believes that the growing popularity in learning platforms is due to the fact that it’s such an adaptable
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