After a 10 year hiatus, I finally had the chance to return to the BETT Conference in London. For the uninitiated, BETT is the largest educational technology conference in the world. In this article I’m going to showcase some of the products I saw.
Clever.com
I’m definitely underselling it when I say that Clever.com is a single sign-on service for your students’ devices. In other words, rather than your students having to remember a username and password for logging on to their Chromebooks, iPads, and so on, they get a special card with a QR Code and when the device opens, they flash it in front of the webcam and it logs them in, so they don’t have to remember their credentials. It saves so much time because, if your classroom was anything like mine, we used to spend half the day logging into devices. On top of that, there were always a number of children that lost their passwords so they had to be reset and by the time everyone finally got logged in, an hour might have passed! Even if all Clever.com did was log students into their device, it is absolutely worth it.
However, Clever has a few other cool features that we use. (I like that the students don’t even realise they are using them.) When the student logs in, they are brought to a portal with a bunch of apps they can use. For example, the most popular one in my school is Mathletics, a fantastic Maths app from 3P learning. I don’t know if they even notice, but when they click on their Mathletics app, they don’t have to log in to it. Clever is clever enough to link all of their apps with their Clever account so there isn’t the need to remember a single password. Well almost.
Unfortunately, there’s a reason why my school is the only school in Ireland using the service. Clever is an American company and it is tailored exclusively to an American audience, which means that it caters to districts. We don’t have this sort of set up in Ireland as all schools are individual private entities. This means that a huge number of integrated apps in Clever won’t work in single units. Oh, and one other thing, I shouldn’t have managed to have a Clever account because it shouldn’t have been available to Irish schools. One of my goals for visiting BETT was to find an alternative or two, and I found two.
ClassLink
The first was ClassLink. The video on the side tells you nothing about it but it’s worth watching for the merch. What ClassLink does is the same as Clever.com but it also has a few extra tools that might be of use. For example, as well as Single Sign-On, students can access their files on various platforms such as Google Drive and Dropbox. The site has a number of videos to explain what it is so here is one example:
Cloudwise is the European equivalent of Clever and Classlink, and they are based in the Netherlands and Belgium. I came across them a few years ago but went with Clever in the end because Clever, when it was available, was free. Cloudwise is more than Single Sign-On as well, although, for me, this is the main thing I care about. To complicate things further, it seems to be going through a rebrand and seems to be called COOL, which, to me, makes it even less obvious to what it does.
Anyway, apart from Single Sign-On, it also incorporates monitoring of what students are doing, which is a very nice feature. This means the teacher can see exactly what is on every students screen at any time. It also allows the teacher to send files and show a particular website on all students’ screens. The teacher can also temporarily stop access to the Internet when he/she needs the students’ attention. There are other features for older students such as plagiarism checkers but probably not needed for primary level. Here is COOL’s way to log in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VKnT8sXe60
I must say, I really like the look of COOL over the other two especially as it incorporates monitoring as an all-in-one package. It’s definitely something I think I’ll be looking into in the not-so-distant future.
Ocram Learn
This device on the left, while small, was the only piece of technology that made me go “wow!” Many of you will be familiar with Reader Pens, small devices aimed at people with reading difficulties, which scans what they are reading and then reads it out. Many of these “pens” are able to read out definitions of words and a few other ideas. However, this all pales into insignificance with this yolk. The ORCAM Learn is an upgrade to the ORCAM Read which was similar enough to the regular Reader Pens that you might be familiar with.
However, what this particular thing does blew my mind, and for someone as cynical as me, it takes a fair amount to do that. Scanning the page initially, you won’t be surprised to hear that it will read the full page to you if you wish. You’ll notice, however, it is clever enough to understand intonation so it actually sounds like a real person is reading it. However, there’s more. You can ask the pen some questions. Simply press a button and ask “find me a six letter word in the text” and in seconds it will read out a word. You can ask loads of different types of questions but even better than that, the pen can ask you questions. It might ask you similar questions and it will understand your input, but it will also be able to ask more complicated questions such as comprehension questions. I’m really not doing it any justice here. It isn’t on the market yet but, in my opinion, if the price is right, it is revolutionary. I asked the lads whether it would be under €1,000 and they weren’t budging.
Interactive Projectors
The era of the projector hasn’t completely gone away and I was interested to see two products which might be of interest to you. One of them is “affordable” and the other is a luxury item that I can’t see any primary schools managing to buy.
Lü Interactive WallDidactix Interactive Floor
Let’s start with the affordable one, around the same price as an Interactive Screen. The Didactix Interactive Projector hangs from a ceiling and projects images on to the floor. While there were a few of these dotted around the Expo, this one stood out in terms of education. Maybe it was just the demo that caught me but it seemed to be aimed at Sensory Rooms as well as learning. The other ones seemed to be variations of Whack-a-mole. In essence, an interactive image is projected onto a floor and can be manipulated depending on the software. It comes in around the €4,000 mark and ships from Poland.
The Lü Interactive Wall is a similar concept but it projects on to a very large wall, like a PE Hall. The demo consisted of people rushing around throwing balls at the projected image, knocking out teeth. It’s easy to see how this could be used for throwing games in PE but if you look more deeply, you can convert walls into various types of goals – from football to basketball, which is very clever.
I imagine it could also be used as a basic projector so you can have your backdrops for your winter concerts ready. I must say I was deeply impressed with this, and it was a bit of a “wow” moment. However, my bubble burst when I heard the thing cost €20,000.
Blocksi
If you are as old as me, you probably remember a program called AB Tutor. The idea behind it was that the teacher could see what was on every student’s screen. It is still around and it works very well but Blocksi, for me, works really well, in particular with Managed Chromebooks. On top of being able to monitor what pupils are doing, it tracks the pupils’ every click and every visit to every site. Many teachers will find that particularly useful. However, on top of this it has an anti-theft feature that tracks exactly where the Chromebook is in real time so if it gets lost, you can find out exactly where it is.
There are some other cool features such as being able to run assessments where you can lock down the Chromebook so only the test is on the screen but probably not that useful for primary schools. This video gives a full overview.
I’ve been a long time fan of this company and I’ve written about them a few times on this site. Sadly, an interview I did with Andy Hopkins back in 2012 has disappeared from the Internet. I forgot I was podcasting before it was cool! I went up to the stand to see if Andy was still there as it’s been 10 years since that interview, and sure enough, there he was! 2Simple is no longer the very simple software it once was, and it has grown into a colossus!
Many people will be familiar with their main offering, which is called Purple Mash. It’s a bunch of mini-programmes, which these days would be called Apps, which encourage creativity through learning.
Reading on your Head and Bookr were two of the more interesting options on show. Reading on your Head is a big collection of reading comprehensions, 2,000 of them in total covering all sorts of aspects of comprehension strategies. It’s simple enough but really stood out as an up and coming company with a nice idea. Bookr seemed to be a more established company and their unique selling position was a complete reading scheme for EAL.
There were three small stands that I hadn’t planned on seeing before I left for BETT but they are all worth a mention.
EdpuzzleSkewbImagi
Edpuzzle
Edpuzzle is a website I had heard of but never used that much. It’s a simple enough concept in that its concept is to make any video into a lesson. Essentially, pick a video with a particular lesson and add some questions. The software will tell you if the student actually watched the video and how they did with the questions. According to their website over 50% of American schools use their service, so not so small really.
Skewb
This unusually sounding website doesn’t give much away as to what it is about and I walked by the stand a couple of times until I saw that it is focused on teaching about Climate Change through Minecraft. Skewb Climate to give it its full name uses the platform to teach children about all things Climate Change. The only issue for schools is whether they have a Microsoft 365 account, because Microsoft bought Minecraft and you need an account to access it otherwise it costs an absolute fortune. Microsoft, as I said earlier, have been busy buying up services that primary school kids are more likely to use. Google take note.
Imagi
One of the biggest issues in the edtech world, which doesn’t seem to be answered is how to get girls into coding. There have been several failed attempts. Imagi aims to change this with their offering. Their About Page says that they are:
building the only mobile-first community targeting 300 million pre-teen girls worldwide with the goal of encouraging them to start coding. The imagi apps introduce Python programming through a visual and gamified learning journey, where colorful designs can be created + shared. We also made a programmable accessory, the imagiCharm, which enhances the learning experience by making code projects more tangible and easy to show off!
https://imagilabs.com/pages/about-us
The video below tells you what you need to know, and to be honest, I can see this working quite well. This was another stand I wouldn’t have spotted but the two women at the stand called me over because I was wearing my Sheffield United lanyard. Sadly they were more interested in the fact that it is a rainbow lanyard rather than being interested in the Sheffield United logo. In fact, I could sense their disappointment when I turned out to be a middle-aged, white, straight man, the privilege dripping off me. Anyway, they were pleasant enough to me and I’m really considering looking into the product.
I want to go through two last products, one which you will be familiar with and one you may not know. My school uses both and I bet you have used one of them while drinking alcohol. Let’s start with the one you’ve definitely heard of, and yes, also the one you’ve drank wine while using.
Zoom
Apart from having the best merch, Zoom have some amazing stuff for the edtech world. I had a long demo from one of their people about a VOIP phone system, and I am definitely sold. In fact, if we can afford it, it’s one of the first things I will do. Essentially, Zoom can replace your regular phones in school and join them up with all of your staff so that the school secretary can transfer a call from a parent to your mobile phone, for example. Basically it ties together all your phone and video conferencing in one place, and you get to keep your phone number.
There is too much to talk about with this service so I’d recommend searching for Zoom VOIP schools to find out more. It was also the only stand where all members of my family were catered to – a pair of socks for me, a notebook for Rozz and one of those popper fidget toys for Emrys.
Impero
The one you might not have heard of is one that I’ve spoken about before, which is called Impero. Impero is all about Internet Safety and Security, but also about Child Protection. You can use it for monitoring children’s use of technology in the school like AB Tutor or Blocksi as mentioned before. However, I really like their child protection software called Edaware, which we use in our school for tracking behaviours, child protection and first aid. It’s a really good tool and if I could get it integrated into my Aladdin, it would be even better!
Despite the fact that the really big tech companies have probably taken the soul out of a lot of it, squeezing out the small interesting companies, BETT is still well worth seeing. It’s so big that it’s impossible not to find something worth looking at for your school. If you haven’t been, see if you can get there sometime.
