Bett Latin America 2014: Powering Learning in Latin America

What is Bett Latin America?

Bett is the global meeting place for the education technology community, providing the very best solutions to inspire and improve learning for over 30 years. 2014 will see this world-class event arrive in Brazil, housed alongside Educar and Educador in São Paulo.

The event will attract Latin America’s highest level buyers and decision makers in the public and private education systems, all on the lookout for the latest products and solutions from across the world. Bett Latin America offers the perfect environment for these influential visitors to source suppliers, make lasting relationships and learn from peers in a series of inspirational seminar sessions.

Who will exhibit?

The highly international range of exhibitors at Bett Latin America will span:

• Content and tools for teaching and learning
• Data tools for leaders and administrators
• Devices, equipment and infrastructure
• End-to-end solutions for education decision-makers

Exhibiting at Bett Latin America

Bett Latin America will be located alongside Educar, with a high level of visitor crossover guaranteed. Complete with two “Learn Live” seminar theatres, and adjacent to the exhibition centre’s catering areas, Bett Latin America will provide strong footfall and networking opportunities for our exhibitors.

Policy makers and ICT buyers at the highest level will attend Bett Latin America. From educators, principals and governors, through to bursars, business directors, and educational ministers, our clients can rest assured they’ll be rubbing shoulders with the industry’s most influential names.

Bespoke opportunities

Want to establish your brand as an innovator? Network with key decision-makers? Be associated with the foremost thought-leaders in the field? There are a huge range of ways you can get involved at Bett Latin America, to gain exposure and raise the profile of your organisation.

Get in touch

Our team would be delighted to hear your business objectives, and together find the perfect solution to grow your business in 2014. Contact us for more information:

Katy McDonnell

E: katy.mcdonnell@i2ieventsgroup.com

T: +44 (0) 20 3033 2248 / +44 (0) 783 497 9988

Gustavo Melo

E: gustavomelo@futuroeventos.com.br

T: +55 (41) 3033 8100

Hooking Students’ Minds With Handheld Devices

All of a sudden, technology in classrooms is undergoing a transformation. But the changes may not be visible at first glance.

The Internet has been around for 17 years or so, interactive white boards are well established in schools, and various forms of touch screen technology have been around for a decade at least. So what’s new now?

Rather like planets aligning and producing a new view of the solar system, three developments in the ICT space are opening up a new vision of what is possible in the classroom. The combination of broadband access to the web, ubiquitous interactive whiteboards and affordable touchscreen devices, allows for learning experiences that simply weren’t available just a few years ago.

This is how the magic happens: hand every student in the class a tablet device, connect them to the resources of the Internet, while demonstrating the same pages on an interactive whiteboard. All of a sudden, the child is in control of their own learning, to an extent never before possible.

Send students to a page that demonstrates equivalent fractions, for example, and let them explore and play with the models presented. What will happen? Students will likely try out crazy ideas. Can you find an equivalent fraction for 5/8? Move the “denominator slider” to the right, starting at 1/16ths, and go right up to 1/96ths! What do you see? Now try it with 6/8 – how is it different?

Learning activities like the one described above are simply not possible with the technology of a previous generation. ICTs, in the hands of the child, allow an engagement, a connection between the device and the student’s mind that helps the child construct understanding of hundreds of topics, in every subject.

I, for one, am excited to be alive at this time when so much is possible through ICTs that are already here. Bett 2013 showcased ideas that no one of us could have imagined, and opened up our imaginations to new possibilities.

Author: Dr Peter Price

Dr Price spent 16 years teaching primary classes, before returning to university to study how students react to physical or ICT representations of maths. He and his wife founded Classroom Professor to produce engaging, excellent resources for teaching maths.

A challenging but great time to be an educator

It’s no secret that students have evolved into tech savvy, connected individuals who work best in an engaged, participatory learning environment. They have been born into the digital age and are entering school with a heightened digital acumen. The sheer scale of Bett in terms of participation and reputation  is testament to the importance placed on technology in schools and the impact it can have on the lives of today’s students and teachers.

In sharp contrast to these millennial students, extensive observations and research shows that while education, students and technology have changed, the classroom environment of fixed, row-by-column furniture that faces one direction has remained the same.  It brings to the surface one of the biggest challenges facing educators today: how can technology, teaching methods and space more effectively support them in improving student success?

It is only by engaging with pupils and creating an environment that fuses together pedagogy, technology and space, that learning and engagement can truly be optimised. Teachers and teaching methods are diverse and evolving. Classes today employ lecture mode, group mode, group setups and individual work. From one class to the next, sometimes during the class period, classrooms need to change. Thus, the classroom should easily and quickly adapt to different teaching and learning preferences. Unfortunately, many of today’s classrooms don’t allow for this adaptation of teaching modes.

The majority of classrooms in use today were built for traditional, “chalk and talk” pedagogies and passive learning, not for today’s active learning approaches. Inflexible layouts and furniture with limited mobility hamper interaction among students, instructors and content. Technology access is also highly variable and often poorly integrated.

Flexibility is key to overcoming the challenge. Classrooms should incorporate flexible furniture to support these shifts and allow access to the technologies in the room, regardless of the classroom’s configuration and learning mode. Technology and furnishings can work together to support the progressive pedagogies being used and enhance the exchange of ideas at a more effective pace. Providing flexibility will support a more holistic “active learning ecosystem.” Sean Corcorran is General Manager at Steelcase Education Solutions.

By Sean Corcorran, General Manager, Steelcase Education Solutions

 

 

 

Managing school IT systems: what to consider

Jim Docherty, UK public specialist at Dell KACE, explores the effective management of IT systems in schools

The last decade has seen a real change in classroom teaching as computing devices have evolved. The computer in the classroom has gone from being a single bulky machine in the corner of the room to becoming an Internet-connected tablet or laptop in the hands of each student. Assets and lessons are delivered with IT supporting the learning experience in the classroom.

Technology has become an ever-greater part of both the curriculum itself and the vehicle by which lessons are delivered. This means that effective technology management has grown in importance as well. Parallel to the ongoing discussion about students getting value from their lessons, a debate has been sparked on how to ensure pupils are getting the most from their schools’ IT. How ever teachers want to use IT resources as part of their lesson planning, the IT team at a school or college needs to monitor, manage, secure, update and track these new devices that are entering the classroom.

As the school IT landscape grows in complexity, this is more difficult to keep up with. Previously, a school’s systems administrator could manage one set of assets, based on one operating system and a limited number of applications. However, the growth in new computing devices, including tablets and smartphones, makes that much rarer, leading to more variation in operating systems and a wider range of applications that have to be supported. At the same time, different education establishments have different sets of pupils: a primary or secondary school will have mostly school-owned devices to manage, while colleges and universities will have to deal with pupil-owned devices in the classroom or lecture hall.

Rolling out an update or patching potential vulnerabilities could therefore cause real headaches for sysadmins within education. Keeping these new assets up-to-date is becoming progressively more important as the reliance on them for learning continues to increase. There is no ‘one size fits all’ model for education IT, but there are ways in which the processes for support and IT management can be simplified.

Looking at automation for IT processes is a great way to reduce the impact that new devices can have on the classroom. From discovering and tracking assets to remote wiping and security policy enforcement, automating management tasks is one way to ensure that IT can keep up with all the different requirements they have on their plate. Similarly, reducing the manual overhead for systems management around mobile devices can be achieved through more automation of asset tracking, installation and tracking.

Sysadmin responsibilities and workload will continue to increase as the volume, complexity and vulnerability of technology in schools also continues to increase. Without the right tools, resources will be seriously drained. However, if correctly armed, a sysadmin can set and forget the automation of a large proportion of the everyday, repetitive tasks around IT assets. This allows IT to focus on the bigger projects that will drive value to the school and, ultimately, improve the education experience for its students.

Mine’s an iPad

Steve Smith from Capita IT Services looks at implementing Bring your own device solutions for schools

 There has been much debate of late surrounding the advantages of schools embracing the ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) concept. The discussions have been fuelled by the difficult financial climate and the need to ensure staff and students have access to engaging educational content.

Apart from a few pioneering souls, BYOD in the education sector has very much remained in its infancy. But recent changes have meant BYOD has suddenly become a real possibility for schools.

Fired by an explosion in the availability of affordable tablets, smart phones and ‘apps’, the ability to piggy back on students’ and staff’s own technology is a viable way to increase access to technology in school. Easier and more affordable BYOD management systems are also making it a realistic solution along with increasing expectations from students and staff who want to use the same technology in school that they do at home.

However, to date, some real barriers to BYOD in school have existed – not least network security and device management. How do you ensure access to material is appropriately controlled, that your data cannot be breached and you are at no greater risk from viruses?  And how can your IT staff manage the variety of technology platforms appearing in the tablet market now, and how can teachers cope with their students viewing content on a variety of different devices with different screen sizes and interfaces?

Recent developments mean that schools can now confidently and affordably implement BYOD. One solution, for instance, is software that allows all classroom resources to be accessed via a web browser which manages access rights, converts content to be relevant to the device used and ensures security is controlled centrally and not on the device. This takes the headache out of the process and ensures your school is free to take advantage of BYOD without your IT manager turning into a quivering wreck at the mere mention of an untrusted device being used on the network.

The implications for the school mean greater access to the latest technology and where money is spent on ICT, it can be on more specialist technologies for music, science or design or provided to pupils unable to access their own devices, helping close the digital divide.

This is why BYOD will soon be a consideration for all schools. Access will no longer be confined to anytime and anywhere. It is now anytime, anywhere, any device and any source.

Steve Smith is director of learning at Capita IT Services which offers services and advice to schools considering cloud and BYOD implementations. www.capita-its.co.uk Capita IT services will be on stand B250 at Bett 2013.