Not being particularly grumpy, but these things have started to grate…
1. People who start their first sentence when they are interviewed with “as I was saying…”.
2. Usually the same people start the next answer with “yes, yes, no…” or “no, yes”. Usually designed to stop you talking as they like the sound of their voice too much.
3. “You know what I mean?” In every sentence. Argh!
You know, it happens, the fortunate typo. I was aiming to type ‘wiki’, and my fat fingers hit a ‘q’ and I ended up at Qwiki – what a lovely discovery.
The homepage states that Qwiki “knows millions of things” – so I tested it with Barwell. The old village we used to live in in sedentary Leicestershire. What I got was a pretty impressive run down of Barwell, telling me things (literally with the automatic text to speech audio) that I didn’t know about the place even though we had lived there for too long. I then tried something that would be a bit more rich in content, and the Amazon Rainforest looks pretty amazing.
Qwiki is based on wikis, so it doesn’t actually know everything, but I can see how this could be a stunning resource for the classroom – as do quite a few of you it seems, as my bit.ly link to it was clicked on over 250 times between last Thursday and today! It will be fascinating to see how it develops, but for now, I am just having fun being told stuff I didn’t know I needed to know!
Do you think you will use Qwiki? What uses do you think you will put it to?!
Monday? But BETT finished on Saturday! Not for me…yesterday, and for the rest of this week will be catch up. What did we do, who did we see, who can we meet… And thinking about our next show, the Education Show in March. Please fill in this Wallwisher page to tell me what you thought about our stand, and the experience you had of Scholastic at BETT:
I woke up with a spring in my step on Saturday. My feet barely hurt, the walk to the show seemed to take no time at all, and everything was just right. Is it a coincidence I had been at a TeachMeet the night before? Was I floating? Possibly!
Saturday is a good day to be a visitor at BETT. There are many fewer visitors, and much more time for you to talk to people on and off stands. It was for this reason I was a bit nervous about the number of people who would be around to hear Anthony Browne talk on our stand; but I shouldn’t have worried. The stand was at least six deep, with people sitting on the floor to hear him talk. We had over 100 people for over an hour listening to the Children’s Laureate talking about books, reading Gorilla and answering questions. He then went on to sign (and draw gorilla’s on) copies of Gorilla. He was such a nice man to talk to, and someone I have been a fan of for such a long time – I was ever-so-slightly star struck!
Anthony Browne was on our stand to launch Read & Respond Engage. I have never hidden what I think about Read & Respond – I believe it is by far the best resource that Scholastic, and other publishers have produced for teaching literacy in the classroom. It ensures that the classic children’s book is at the heart of every lesson, and that most importantly children develop a real love of reading through it. I am particularly excited about Engage, as it really does what it says on the tin. You can show videos, photographs; assign work to pupils to do in school or at home etc. etc. I don’t usually talk about resources we publish on my blog, but this time, I had to make an exception! If anyone wants to try it out, please let me know – you know where I am!
We hosted two more TeachMeet takeovers on Saturday, and again was delighted to meet even more people from Twitter! Another highlight was Ian Addison standing up at the end of a Class PET presentation talking about how they use Class PET in their school, and what the children think about it. As soon as I have video, I will post it here! Needless to say, Ian was an incredibly natural presenter, presenting in the live Class PET, showing real results… I was really happy with the presentation, so thank you Ian!
In summary…BETT this year was by far the best show I have attended in all the years that I have been running exhibitions. It was really interesting that after all of the hype over hardware for many years, it was the show for content (apparently publishers are now ‘content providers’!). It was nice to see the amount of interest we got for products we have worked so hard on – including Class PET and Read & Respond Engage.
It was worth all of the sleepless nights; the attention to detail really paid off and we just have to think about what to do next year!
I woke up on Friday morning thinking that I had only just closed my eyes. The long walk to the show seemed longer than usual and my feet posted a petition for divorce. Then I realised I was only half way through, and decided to buck my ideas up, and found some Music to Wake A Stand Up To…
The show was so busy on Friday that it was 3pm before I looked at my watch. Everything seemed to go seamlessly – no technical hitches, everyone there when you needed them – almost as if we had planned it!
We did have some special guests on the stand. David Mitchell (@deputymitchell) brought six of his pupils from Heathfield CPS in Bolton onto our stand to do some experiments to help launch Scholastic Primary Science – a really nice new science scheme full of practical science experiments, ebooks and science APP. The pupils, and staff were thoroughly professional all the time they were on our stand; and some of the pupils managed to get their charicatures done by our resident artist, Hutch.
It was also great to see Tom Sale and James Maloney who had made the long trip down from Blackpool and many other teachers who made the time to come and see us on the stand. TeachMeet Takeover took off on Friday, many more presentations held compared to last year, and again we hosted two events on our stand. Presentations by Alessio Bernardelli & Dan Roberts followed by Ian Addison were tremendous. If you haven’t been to a TeachMeet before, you should – find out more here.
Friday night was TeachMeet BETT – something I had been looking forward to for a long time. The evening was very professionally run by the Two Ians (@ianaddison and @iusher). I was slightly disappointed in two or three of the presentations, two of them were adverts for the companies that stood up, and one pretty much bordered it! There is a show floor for exhibitors to talk to teachers, the TeachMeet was a time for teachers to talk to teachers, it appeared that not everyone understood that.
I loved Dughall’s snow-day presentation, and Bill Lord’s reflections on @giraffeclass (a must-follow!), but the rest were just as good and the event was a real testament to the passion that was in that room.
TeachEat was brilliant. I had avoided it last year as I didn’t think that people would want someone from a company there, but the pizza was just what I needed at the end of a long, but fantastic day.
So Wednesday has come and gone, and Thursday is here. This time last year, we were hopeful that things would get better, this year, we were hopeful that things would be as good as yesterday! The good news is that the stand was busier from the outset all the way through the day.
One of the problems you have as an exhibitor, is the problem of making sure that the people who come on to the start of a presentation stay all the way through to the end. One of the ideas that was had was to have a prize draw at the end of each presentation to ensure that people stayed around to listen. Some call it bribery, I may agree. Whatever you call it, it worked! We really did have a lot of people taking part in a lot of presentations (14 per day!) and many people stayed to listen to more than one.
At this stage, I have to say a huge thank you to the presenters who, between them did 56 presentations, and there were only four of them! They were Russ Payne, Tim Meek, Paul Naish and Paula Hubbard. It is a testament to their professional presentations that we had such an amazing show.
We had been showing Read & Respond Engage a lot during the show, and we were getting many good responses from people, some saying that it was just what they needed and signing up there and then. One visitor said that it was refreshing to see a digital resource that kept the children’s book at the heart of the resource. Another said it was the best thing they had seen at the show.
It was on Thursday that I met some people I have followed and respected for a very long time, Ewan McIntosh, John Davitt and David Whyley. It was nice for me not to be on stage for most of the day, so that I had the time to talk to these very inspirational people! We were delighted to host two TeachMeet Takeover slots on Wednesday from Bev Evans and Kevin Mulryne. 
Thursday night was Collaborate for Change at BETT night, and I went along to take the photos (yes, I was the annoying git hovering over you taking photos!). It was really good to see a room full of teachers sharing ideas about the resources they use in the classroom. It was also good to catch up with Ant from 2Simple (@2simpleant), Ian Addison (@ianaddison), Charlie Deane (@charliedeane) and many more!
The good news was that I got back to the hotel in time for food before the mayhem that was Friday!
BETT is one of those shows that you think about for a long time. We started planning BETT 2011 in February 2010, allowing ourselves time to have crazy ideas that keep us awake at night, and then distil them into common sense punchy ideas for the show. For example, back in May we had the idea of a QR treasure hunt, and then in September I listened into a great presentation at the Scottish Learning Festival Teach Meet by Jennifer Harvey about setting up a QR treasure hunt which helped focus our minds.
BETT is also the worst time in the year for an exhibition – a week after you return from Christmas! This year we also had the dreaded flu to contend with, which took out our exhibitions coordinator until the Monday after BETT! Nevertheless, the stand on the Tuesday seemed to be ahead of the year before, and we even had time to do some presentation run throughs before we finished setting up at 8pm.
Wednesday morning started with me in Sainsbury’s buying my own body weight in Chocolate Eclairs (we had this idea that we should have a purple theme, and it was the only sweet that fitted the bill). On the stand, we had a massive problem with the Internet connection. For some reason, our brand new router decided that it didn’t want to do a full time job. We didn’t really need the stress, but after a couple of hours it was back and we could start the show with everything working!
Wednesday was busy. Compared to the Wednesday before, where it was so quiet we played spot the visitor, this year we were busy fro
m 10:30am to about 4:00pm. We met so many excellent people on our stand it has been hard to remember them all – but needless to say that the show started with a bang!
The Wednesday evening was TedXOrenda. Organised by Drew Buddie (@digitalmaverick), one of the most passionate and energetic people I know, it was a great start to the three day teacher-curated BETT. I absolutely loved listening to the speakers – top of the list would be Naomi Jane (@missnaomijane)who gave a talk about the effect that teachers can, and do have on the lives and prospects of pupils. Maybe it was because I could relate very closely to what she was discussing, or whether it was because she was such an assured public speaker, her words were incredibly inspirational. I was delighted how well the Hexayurt programmes went down, a homage to the work of Vinay Gupta (@leashless). Again, the compering by Bill Thompson was excellent, this Ted event is going from strength to strength!
Unfortunately, we got back to the hotel very late, too late for food, so I ended the day having eaten no more than breakfast.
Due to mechanical error (printer breaking down), and local company error (not printing enough and running out of time) I could really do with some help to print the TeachMeet Takeover 2011 flyer.
The PDF is in my dropbox here. I have managed to get 200 done, but I would think that every stand hosting would need a similar number. Could I ask that everyone who can, prints as many as they can and brings them along to BETT? The format is very simple, double sided A4 folded to A5. If you can’t help, let me know and I will find another way around it!
While I am handing links out, here is the link to the PowerPoint with the TeachMeet Takeover logo on, for display on stands…
On both links, it is easier to right click, and ‘save target as…’
Thank you!
I am sure it was firmly tongue in cheek, but this morning on Twitter, there was reference made to ‘always sad at the sales vultures on the trade stands at bett with expensive things for the gullible’.
It did remind me though of BETT last year, and how with TeachMeet Takeover on the stand teachers handing out TeachMeet Takeover flyers to visitors got incredibly frustrated as they ‘weren’t selling anything’. Then in Ed Tech Roundup #54, teachers voiced how incredibly annoyed that they were ignored, walked and barged past, even though they had something very important to talk to them about that was FREE!
I’m afraid that is the way of the exhibiting world. I get infuriated by people saying that they have walked around all of BETT and there was ‘no content’ anywhere to be seen. Why do I get frustrated? Because I have worked for eleven months to produce a stand that has nothing on it apart from content! We have some stunning resources this year, that are just what teachers need to engage and excite learners, and it is my job to ensure that if you are looking for resources, you talk to us!
This year, we are looking forward to a good BETT. Our first meeting was in February, and we have been working to improve on everything we did last year. Our presentations will be more interactive, the stand will be more colourful, we will engage more than just the people who are on our stand. Why are we doing this? We need you to see what we are doing! Exhibitions is only a small part of what I do at work. There are teams of people creating top quality content for teachers to use in the classroom – my job is to make sure that you see it!
We do try and let people know what we are doing before the show, and we do try and talk to people to ensure that we don’t waste your time at the show (if you go around the exhibition properly, it can take two to three days!). But for every teacher who reads my posts, articles and press releases about what we have in store for you, there will be ten who don’t – it is these people that ‘sales vultures’ need to talk to at the show.
So, as you wonder around BETT this week, don’t think about the people on stands as sales vultures, think of them as people who are trying very hard to show you just what you are looking for!
Yours, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, Chris!
Image courtesy of the most fabulous Ian Usher http://chrisr.at/hWLtZw
Righto, BETT is around the corner (literally for some, a train ride for others), and Scholastic are gearing up, pulling out all of the stops (that’s enough tired old clichés, Ed) to ensure you have the best BETT ever! Oh, and if you can’t make it, don’t worry, you can still take part!
Last year the Scholastic stand was pretty good, but we realised that a tweak there, a polish here would really make the stand sparkle, and that is just what we have planned for you this year. The watch-word is ‘fun’. If you leave the stand and you aren’t smiling, we will chase you down the aisles until you do!
So, here are the things that we are planning:
Anthony Browne, Children’s Laureate will be coming to the Scholastic stand (G40) to launch Read & Respond Engage. We are quite rightly incredibly proud of Read & Respond Engage. It manages to retain the wonderful feel of Read & Respond (using high-quality children’s books such as Gorilla) with some amazing new features that only the web can offer. Anthony will be with us on Saturday, and we are very excited!!
Now, some people (we won’t name names, you know who you are) took advantage of my good nature and suggested this quite ridiculous idea. I said yes, they have me on tape, I have been committed. We are looking to hand over some pretty amazing prizes – come along on the day to find out exactly what you have to do to get one!
A lovely mashup of QR codes, treasure hunts and in a weird sort of way, orienteering – whichever way you look at it , there is an iPad to be won at the end!! If you can’t make it to the show, and you still want to join in, we have a virtual treasure hunt as well…more details to be posted on the first day of the show for this!
Oh yes, a stunning new interactive primary science scheme. A maths reading scheme for KS1 with more ebooks than you can shake a stick at. More Class PET (this time with mental maths and homework); more Story Stage, a new look Child Education and We Are Writers has been shortlisted for a BETT award!
We are hosting Teach Meet Takeover on our stand – two per day from Thursday to Saturday, and the line-up this year looks really good. Take a look at the TeachMeet schedule here for more info!
Get your portrait done on our stand with our resident charicature artist (on stand all week), charge your phones, have a play with Story Stage on the smart table, graffiti on our doodle wall, eat our chocolate, sit on our sofas…and if we can make it work hack into our wifi for free and watch everything you like on the live stream!
I’m exhausted before we have started!
