The greatest show on Earth?

For four days last week, London's Olympia was home to the BETT Show. An estimated 30,000 people passed through the doors to see the future of education for themselves. It is a real spectacle â€" hands swooping across whiteboards, handheld voting systems for interactive game-show style quizzes in class, digital signs that keep students up to date with the latest school news. It's exciting, frenetic and you get really carried away with all the wonderful things on display.

Some of the most notable displays came from the big hitters, of course. Microsoft provided demonstrations of their interactive desk, Surface, as did their competitor, SMART, with the SmartTable. They were engaging, easy to use, but didn't seem to add anything to the learning experience. I think, though, that devices like these do signal a new kind of technology in schools - they may just have some way to go yet.

I was really impressed with the 2Simple and StudyWiz stands - the first I imagine would be great for primary children, and involves making your own flash games and puzzles. Given that game design is now included in the Scottish curriculum, this introduces that concept to the youngest learners. StudyWiz is a set of resources which encourage participation in a virtual learning environment (although as Ofsted has told us last week, they're not proving as popular as previously thought!) and integrates with handheld devices like games consoles and mobile phones. I could see how well this might work in classroom, and give the learner an active role to play.

There were also engaging policy discussions set up by Becta and DCSF about how these technologies might affect the curriculum and examinations - particularly pertinent given the ongoing reviews of the current systems on both sides of the border. This provided an important link between the technology and the teachers, which felt more and more crucial with each stall I visited - sometimes the sheer excitement of handling the gadgets can take you away from the learning rather than closer to it, and I thought these panels provided a decent sense of balance.

One of my biggest disappointments was that I couldn't make it to the TeachMeet09 event - which is growing in number every year, and seems to be the place at BETT where a lot of the real innovation is taking place. Short and snappy presentations are the order of the day, and the focus is on sharing practice rather than hypothetical discussion about technology. The Scottish contingent is very well represented too, and it seems to me that TeachMeet is one of the few chances that teachers get to have these discussions with people outside of their local authority. I will certainly be signing up for next year's event.

For those teachers who weren't lucky enough to brave the stampede at BETT, though, there is so much technology available at your fingertips to be used and exploited for fun lessons. Mobile capability is growing all the time - so instead of getting your class to switch them off, get them to use them for learning, by taking pictures, or recording video and audio. Similarly, there are so many cheap handheld cameras on the market now that you can make your own documentaries in school as part of a project. Computer games consoles, the kind of technology that I was told to switch off when I was supposed to be doing my homework, are now used educationally - the Nintendo DS experiment carried out by Derek Robertson at LTS has proven very successful so far and hopefully will encourage teachers to unlock the technologies all around them. And don't forget technologies like telly and radio - we haven't, and if you must be hi-tech, you can catch it on the iPlayer...

Extra links:
The best of the tech that teaches by Rory Cellan-Jones (along with his lesson from tech hell)
Ollie Bray's BETT 09 posts
Technorati search of tag bett09
Flickr photos tagged with bett09
Twitter BETT updates tagged #bett09
Twitter TeachMeet updates tagged #tmbett09
Flashmeeting of TeachMeet at BETT09