It’s Saturday 14 January and the bee-it team are up bright and early to man the bee-it stand and uncover as many exciting innovations and interesting developments as possible on the final day of BETT 2012.

 

The first trip of the day was over to the other side of the Grand Hall balcony to talk to Adrian Burt, Managing Director of online pupil reward system, Vivo Rewards. Speaking about the progress of Vivo Rewards over the past 12 months, Adrian said:

 

“Over the last year, we have been redeveloping our reporting platform to enable the reporting of teachers’ usage of Vivo – this helps to ensure that pupils are rewarded consistently across a school.

 

“In addition to this, next week we will be launching ‘Pay the Difference’, a facility designed to enable pupils or their parents to buy items from the rewards store using their Vivo credits, topped up with real money.”

 

During BETT 2012, Vivo officially launched their primary school version of the rewarding system called Vivo Stars. bee-it will be bringing you more news of this exciting development in the near future, but for those who simply can’t wait, click here for more information in the meantime!

 

 

Back in the National Hall, Mary Blake, Educational Consultant at ePace gave bee-it a demonstration of the online pupil profiling and assessment tool.

 

The ePace system asks pupils a number of questions on varying topics and then generates a report to highlight where each child’s strengths and weaknesses lie. This is not the type of system that will say ‘struggling in maths, great at English’, but instead, it will provide teachers with a wealth of information about pupils’ learning styles and how to best ensure they are fully understanding the lessons being taught.

 

Shortlisted for this year’s BETT Awards, ePace takes into account a range of factors which can affect learning such as auditory memory, emotional control, hand-eye coordination and much more besides. This data is then turned into charts, explained in more detail and coupled with information about what a teacher or pupil can do to help with their learning. For more information about ePace click here.

 

A short trip downstairs on Stand E100, the team at NetSupport were busy demonstrating NetSupport School v11, the latest version of the popular classroom management system. NetSupport School v11 includes a number of major new developments, including a range of new system management tools to the technician’s console, an optimised file distribution system and a unique Question and Answer module.

 

The new Q&A Module has been built around current teaching practices for the continual assessment of learning. This feature has a number of benefits and enables teachers to verbally ask questions to the class, gauge pupils’ answers and understanding, introduce new question styles to the lesson, develop peer assessment opportunities, and track rewards against individual and team responses. Furthermore, this exciting development adds a level of gamification to learning to help encourage lesson participation and improve levels of understanding. Stay tuned to bee-it for more information about NetSupport v11, coming very soon!

 

 

Over in the Green Software zone, e-learning company vision2Learn spoke to bee-it about their soon-to-be-released ICT Level 3 course. The Essential IT Skills course is designed to provide pupils with an in-depth understanding of how IT functions in the world of work and help them to prepare for future employment opportunities. Topics covered in the course include enhancing productivity using IT, mastering spreadsheets and developing word processing skills.

 

Speaking to the team at vision2Learn, you gain a real sense of their ‘community learning’ focus. In a bid to get parents involved with their children’s learning, vision2Learn are encouraging parents to take courses in ICT, Business Administration or Equality and Diversity absolutely free of charge!

 

For more information about vision2Learn or to book a free consultation in your school, click here to visit the website.

 

Back downstairs towards the rear of the National Hall, the team at Pupil Asset were busy showcasing the latest developments to the online pupil tracking system. During the last year, Pupil Asset held numerous focus groups with schools to gain an insight into how teachers are using the system and how it could be improved. Following this research, the technical team have implemented a new headline stats page which instantly shows statistics from across the school as soon as a teacher logs in. This has made accessing valuable data instantaneous, and alongside the parental portal which will be launched later this year, has improved the functionality and usability of Pupil Asset.

 

The next stop of the day was Stand E105 to chat to internet filtering and reporting company Smoothwall about allowing pupils to ‘BYOD’ – Bring Your Own Devices – a hot topic in the education sector at the moment. Whilst there are clearly many benefits for schools allowing this practice, questions have to be asked about how schools can monitor and control the level of internet access pupils have on their mobile phones, PDAs or tablets. The team at Smoothwall shared some of the improvements the system has undergone to address these concerns with bee-it.

 

 

During the last twelve months, the well-known Smoothwall system has gone through a redevelopment to help improve usability as well as functionality. After designing several new interfaces for the control panel, Smoothwall conducted a number of trials to gain feedback into what works and what needed to be improved. The newly-released version aims to be more user-friendly and help save time, thanks to its clean, simplistic look, but it still retains all of the features which have seen Smoothwall become a highly regarded system.

 

One of the latest developments has been to enable the filtering of content on anything on the school network – be it a phone, PDA or tablet – and, in an impressive use of technology, the Smoothwall system is now able to monitor and filter out inappropriate content on iPhones, regardless of whether they are on the school network or their own mobile network. Over the coming months, this technology will be expanded to enable filtering of Android devices too.

 

For more information about Smoothwall, click here.

 

Elsewhere in the exhibition hall, a giant giraffe head could be seen surveying its surroundings and attracting many people to Stand K11 where animation software experts, Zu3D were demonstrating how schools can get the most out of animation for learning.

 

Taking a few seconds away from the busy stand, Company Director, David Henley explained what Zulogic, the company behind Zu3D had been up to over the last twelve months. He said:

 

“We have just released the latest version of Zu3D which gives pupils an even greater level of control and flexibility in their animations. We have had some excellent feedback from our users since we launched, and we are really pleased to have been able to add several new features to the system in time for BETT 2012.”

 

The new features include chroma-key (green-screen) facilities which enable pupils to add their own images or videos as backdrops to their animations, a magic rubber (rig-removal) which allows pupils to erase any wires they may be using to make objects ‘fly’, and the ability to write or draw directly onto the screen, such as when using speech bubbles for example.

 

Current users of Zu3D can upgrade to the latest version by contacting the team at Zulogic, and if you are interested in stop-motion animation but are not sure where to start, take a look at the brand new Zu3D Complete Animation Kit.

 

 

Over on Stand G69, the bee-it team made a final visit for the day, and indeed BETT 2012, to classroom management company, Netop to discover more about their brand new software, Netop Vision Pro.

 

The latest edition to the Netop family comes complete with all of its predecessor, Netop Vision 7’s features, such as being able to share files and control pupil screens, but has been given an overhaul with three powerful enhancements.

 

The High-Speed Screen Sharing enables teachers to share graphic-intensive applications with pupils in real time, preventing lagging and intensive memory usage across the network. Ultimate Web Control allows ‘on the fly’ blocking or opening of websites to reduce requests being sent through to the school technician, and Remote Login now allows educators to log in to pupil computers from any remote computer.

 

You can download a free trial of Netop Vision Pro by clicking here.

 

And with that, four o’clock arrives and a loud cheer erupts across the halls of Olympia as BETT reaches its conclusion for another year. It has been another successful show for the bee-it team and we have enjoyed meeting old acquaintances as well as lots of new-bees.

 

As we pull down the banners, unplug the laptops and pack away the stand, we bid a fond farewell to Olympia and look forward to meeting you all once again at Excel for BETT 2013.