BETT Bulletin #1: ICT in the curriculum, plus first looks

This is a quick note, in effect, not an in-depth analysis. That will come in the newsletter Computers in Classrooms, after the show.

ICT in the curriculum

As I suspected, the British government doesn't see ICT as unimportant at all, but regards it as being already embedded in the curriculum. I'll be looking at this in more depth in the newsletter.

First impressions

Recession? What recession? The floor of the venue was absolutely heacing, even by just after it opened. As Ray Barker of BESA said in a briefing this morning, ICT is vibrant in the UK: lots of interest from teachers and others looking at exciting new stuff and thinking about what they might do with it.

Hopefully, of course, it's the other way round: we should always start with the questions:

• What do we want to achieve?
• What do we want the kids to learn?
• What do we want that learning to look like?

• How are we going to measure learning gains?

First looks

The SMARTBoard 800 series has some pretty nice features, including a few I wasn't aware of when I wrote about whiteboards here recently. Their new document camera/visualiser integrates seamlessly with SMART Notebook software.

Seen from a distance: RM's answer to the iPad. It looks neat, and a teacher I know was telling me he'd had a look and liked it a lot, and that the price is good too: £399.

But I haven't seen it for myself yet, so this is not a recommendation, just a suggestion that you take a look if you get the opportunity. Same applies to the SMART products too, especially the visualiser, which I haven't seen in action yet.