Nicholas Hughes: BETT Day 1

Hi :o)

So my first day at BETT is over.

Thanks to everyone who said Hi, it was great to catchup.

My wearables jacket got a lot of love and it survived.

So did anything stand out? Well today I took a much more floating approach as I had a talk to give on a Stand and was helping on a tour with 3BM in the afternoon.

Minecraft Education Edition was very interesting. I was waiting to see what Minecraft was going to do with Minecraft since they bought it. It is in simple terms a 'new' version of Minecraft that will replace Minecraft EDU that many schools use. It will be now linked to children's office 365 accounts. While I have some issue with the price, the new system seems to suggest that it will be very easy to install and set up servers. More information is coming on this.

There where many great ideas for how to use Minecraft in the curriculum. (I will do another post soon on some of theses) But below show a model of the human eye that you can walk around.

This one is all about digging up dinosaur bones.

I loved some of the new products form TTS. A NeoPixel Screen (£60)and a Controller (£20) both are to be used with scratch, They are simple to use and provide another level of input and output to Scratch. It makes it very simple to use in class.

The also had a preview of a new robot called the InO-bot, it is a fairly impressive robots that has a lot of sensors. Its nice but there are lots of robots to choose from on the Market at the moment and I would still look to the mBot.

Before I did my talk on the mBot on the Exa Stand I saw Su Adams (@SuAdamsEdIT ) about the Sphero. Now I really like this robot but her maze idea is great.

This I saw on another stand at the Show.

Me giving my talk.

Nic @duck_star sharing approaches to robotics in the primary classroom #bett2016 @exaeducation pic.twitter.com/BU1d7vXdnK
— Alan O'Donohoe (@teknoteacher) January 21, 2016

Another new robot I saw called the Kubo Junior. It was a really nice KS1 robot that 'read' card on the table and then performed the instructions. They also talked about that it could be programmed in scratch and then even Arduino, by changing the head. It is going to be launched on Kickstarter later in the year.

Ohbot is a great programable head. I have 2 versions of it and think it is a great option for programming a physical device. (More to come later)

Some cool tech - a PiTopCEED which is a £99 screen for use with a Raspberry Pi. I have supported this on Indiegogo. More to come on this.

TTS also was launching a new bluetooth tile board for the Bluebot. Interesting but I think the same thing could be achieved with physical cards and work just as well. Could be good for SEN children. Need to look at again.

Explain Everything an App that we use in school for lessons, is introducing a new app that allows collaboration, It isn;t free, but seems to combine features of Showbie and Nearpod. Worth a further look especially if you really like Explain Everything.