An Expat Educator in Asia

Wow! What a week it was at BETT!

For me it was a great opportunity to meet with some great supporters of my business in Hong Kong, to learn about new developments in arguably the world’s most developed nation for the use of ICT in Education, to listen to some great speakers and classroom practitioners, and to discuss with sponsors about the opportunity presented by the conference we are planning for Hong Kong.

Firstly, over to the Netherlands and a few days with my wife, Yvonne’s, family.

I think the thing that I learnt best from this part of the trip was that Europeans still smoke a hell of a lot and how unprepared I am for this, given so many years now in countries that ban smoking, especially in places where food and drink are consumed. Traveling in the winter where doors and windows are shut, I find it a bit of a challenge to endure the slow smoking of my lungs. In spite of this, we did a lot of traveling throughout the Netherlands and saw a lot of the countryside and met a lot of family.

Returning to London, we had only a day for sightseeing prior to BETT commencing at London Olympia.

I am not going to comment a lot on the technology on display at BETT as I know that a lot of others have already done this via blogs and many other forums. What I want to do here is make some general comments about the mood I picked up and the differences between attending last year as a “newby” and returning this year as more of an “old hand”.

The most striking thing that I found was the step up that many providers are making in the marketing of their products. It would appear that there is somewhat of an “arms race” going on between many entities, especially the IWB, projector and software sellers to bring out more and more and tout it as the saving grace for educators. It must be very hard for the IT coordinator in the UK with a limited budget to wade through all of the hype and find what really works in their own context. Any wonder in this environment that the schools often get into a game of “follow the leader” and tick off the purchase of the popular technologies

On the great tools front, the ASAS Eee PC loomed large at the show and looked for my opinion, to be a good tool for solving the access problem for schools.

Filed under: Appropriate Hardware for Education