As the dust settles on this year’s BETT Show, bloggers have been frantically sharing their thoughts on the 2010 instalment of the educational technology behemoth.

It was my first time. I had been given many warnings as to the overwhelming nature of an event which brings together 30,000 people amongst more green and purple than a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles convention. But none of the warnings could have prepared me for the sheer scale of BETT.

It was really nice to see mycurriculum.com get a lot of visibility and attention on QCDA’s stand. The website is looking really good now and it was great to see the branding up and demos taking place.

Ray Barker, Director of British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA), the trade association for the educational supply industry, identified two major themes of this year’s BETT in an interview with Teachers TV. Firstly, Mr. Barker said that this year’s show was “very practitioner-led”, with a focus on professional development and training for teachers.

Secondly, he emphasized the importance of “pupil voice, learner voice” and of “the kinds of technologies that young people are using.” Google and YouTube both exhibited for the first time this year, and the Playful Learning area seemed to be a big hit too – at least with the students who were taking part in the gaming. Some bloggers have commented that there may have been too much emphasis on the “playful” and not enough on the “learning” here. The pupils certainly weren’t complaining.

Whatever the value of the games exhibited here, this seems to me to be a worthy shift in attitude (if indeed it is a shift in attitude). The potential for fun on show at BETT – from 3D video to “serious”  gaming – is encouraging. Schools have traditionally tended to fear technology, often feeling more inclined to ban new devices than integrate them into the learning experience.

If BETT 2010 does mark, or at least reflect, a greater willingness to blur the boundaries between work and play and to help pupils enjoy learning more, then this can only be a good thing for young people and those children just entering the education system. In fact I rather envy them.

BESA, BETT, BETT 2010, Education, Game, games, play, Playful Learning, technology

Wednesday 13^th January sees this year’s BETT Show roll into town. Housed within London’s cavernous Olympia and playing host to 600 exhibitors and almost 30,000 visitors, BETT is the largest educational technology conference in the world.

Every year BETT gives teachers and those involved in education the opportunity to enhance their knowledge of learning through technology. We will be there, catching up with friends, partners and clients – and investigating some of the new developments at the start of an exciting new decade for ICT in education.

The central theme that seems to be coming out of the build up to BETT 2010 is playfulness. Professor Stephen Heppell will be running a new feature at the expo entitled ‘Playful Learning’ – an interactive area where visitors can immerse themselves in educational gaming at its best and use fun technology to overcome learner engagement issues.

Prof Heppell points out that “survey after survey suggests that our UK schoolchildren may be some of the least happy in Europe” and thinks he has the solution: “Playful learning is great fun and has re-energised classrooms, rekindled school-parent relationships and re-engaged brains.”

Other new features for BETT 2010 include the Future Learning Spaces area, which will give visitors a glimpse of what classrooms could look like in several years’ time, and TeachMeet Takeover – thirty minute slots when vendors hand over their stalls to informal, teacher-led discussions.

BETT 2010 looks set to reflect the trends and developments of the past year. The last twelve months has seen the continued rise of social media, and particularly the explosion of Twitter into the mainstream. There has been a degree of acceptance that these media are valid forms of communication for children and young people, with suggestions that they can improve confidence and literacy.

The prominence of these topics is reflected in the seminar programme at the event. Other significant issues of the past year include augmented reality (AR) and eSafety. The former is represented by Futurelab’s Spark, a mobile exhibition which uses 2D AR markers to enhance pupils’ experience in the classroom. Meanwhile Roar Educate’s Us Online seeks to educate pupils on safety, security and good citizenship in the online world.

The Government’s Home Access scheme is being formally launched at BETT 2010. A trial of the scheme – which will seek to remedy the ‘digital divide’ by providing 270,000 low income homes with computers and internet access – “went like a rocket” according to Becta, the government agency in charge of it. The scheme is exciting news for all those working with ICT in education – but it is likely to cause controversy given the state of the economy as a general election approaches.

We will be helping our good friends at QCDA. Since last year’s event we have been working hard together on mycurriculum.com, a website which allows teachers to connect and collaborate with each other by discussing best practice and sharing resources, activities and examples of pupils’ work. QCDA will be showcasing the site on two of their four ‘pods’ so come and check it out at Stand J30.

See you there!

BESA, BETT, BETT 2010, conference, Education, event, exhibition, expo, ICT, schools, technology

There were some fantastic Christmas campaigns from digital creative agencies this year. Armed with some torches and a huge amount of festive enthusiasm, I persuaded the team to brave the cold of Islington to deliver our own one! Take a look…

campaign, christmas, digital creative agency, islington

“Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words” – Shailesh Nalawadi, Product Manager for Google Goggles.

Google’s new Goggles project allows users to gain access to information about an item or location simply by pointing their phone at it. So the phone can connect to reviews of a restaurant, the history of a landmark, or price comparisons for a book – all without any text having been inputted.

The technology works in conjunction with a mobile phone camera; the user takes a photograph of an object and the application scans it, comparing elements of that digital image against its database of images. When it finds a match, Google tells the user the name of what they’re looking at, and provides a list of results linking through to the relevant web pages and news stories.

The results can then be saved as a history, allowing the user to refer back to these links of interest. As the results are programmed to be relevant and are adjusted to each object: if the user takes a photo of an artwork, the results include the artist’’s biography; whereas for a landmark, the phone provides historical background information.

Google Goggles also uses optical character recognition to identify text, allowing items such as business cards to be snapped and scanned to make phone calls and to add as a contact in your phone directory. Some results don’t even require a photo to be taken due to integration of GPS, augmented reality and digital compass technology. Simply pointing the phone at a location (a business or shop for example) allows the app to place a button with the company name at the bottom of the screen. This can then be touched to load information from a web search.

Google Goggles demonstrates the potential for computer vision technology, but it is not at its full strength yet (hence it is being released by Google Labs). At the moment users will be able to lookup things like CD, DVD and book covers, wines, barcodes, businesses, artworks, logos and landmarks with great success but other objects will not work so well. Cars, animals and food are still in need of development to be photographically understood. Despite the immaturity of the technology, Google states that Goggles can recognise tens of millions of objects and places.

Google also claims that the technology has the potential for face recognition. So in theory a mobile phone could provide personal information on anyone in its viewfinder. Clearly this raises some pretty major privacy issues – and there are currently no plans to release this feature of Goggles. As Vic Gundotra, Google’s Vice-President of Engineering, has said, “We still want to work on the issues of user opt-in and control. We have the technology to do the underlying face recognition, but we decided to delay that until safeguards are in place.”

With this new technology comes exciting prospects for education. Visual search allows for a more interactive and creative form of learning; education can be taken outside the classroom without the need to carry text books for reference. And the fact that these searches can be stored in a history allows for retaining and referring back to this knowledge later.

For example, a class could visit an art gallery on a school trip and simply take photos of the exhibits without having to make a note of the artist. This allows for a liberated experience not tied to pens and paper. Web links generated by these photos would allow a student to purchase a(n e-)book about the artist before they have even left the gallery.

This mobile learning style could engender a sense of adventure and exploration while still linking learners to reference material. Classes could strolls around a new city, capturing images to discover the history of buildings and landmarks. Google Labs state in their accompanying video that they envisage Google Goggles being able to discover the species of plant from a leaf. An added bonus to this visual search ensures that the students need not worry about spelling mistakes and the phrasing of searches in order to gain the results that they require.

Neither the technology behind the application nor the concept is entirely new. Quick Response (QR) codes are two-dimensional barcodes which link to online content when the user takes a photo of one on their camera phone. A simple piece of software enables the phone read the URL encoded within the QR code, and the user is taken directly to that site in the mobile browser.

Image-based searching isn”t completely new either. Prior attempts at the technology include Nokia’’s Point and Find and Amazon’s image recognition search released in October. The most similar product on the market is an application called IQ Engines. But this has a much more commercial focus – connecting mobile users with reviews, prices and purchase links. It remains to be seen whether Google can bring the technology into the mainstream.

Culture, digital, Education, future, google, learning, qr codes, search, technology

The real-time environment of the internet has evolved a concerning dichotomy for fact and fiction. When Michael Jackson died in June, word spread too fast for Google to cope, and the site began blocking any search for “Michael Jackson”. But the lust for up-to-the-minute news could not be kept at bay – word spread through tweets and other micro-blogs regardless. Real time reporting had the edge.

Or did it? On the very same day, Jeff Goldblum was also reported dead, provoking a similar unstoppable surge of rumours and gossip

Real-time internet may be powerful in keeping up-to-date with news, but it most certainly lacks reliability – Jeff Goldblum, as it turns out, is not dead after all. Therein lies the problem. In the explosion of information surrounding extremely recent events, how can we distinguish fact from fiction when we don’t know how the fuse was lit?

Real time is the talk of the internet search town at the moment. Twitter, the biggest contributor to real-time data, continues to grow in popularity and Twitter Search, the only real-time search engine with access to all tweets, is in a powerful position. But a wave of search engines which pull together data from across the web have sprung up recently. Sites like Collecta, OneRiot, and Scoopler broaden real-time search to include blogs, articles, photos, and videos as well as tweets. And in recent months the big players have shown that they want a piece of the action too: Google, Bing and Facebook have all taken steps to keep up with the real-time crowd.

But what exactly is real-time search and why is everyone so excited about it? Traditionally, search engines like Google have organised their results based on authority. Sites have authority if they have grown slowly and organically over time. Real-time search engines, on the other hand, sort their results by how recent they are. Through these search engines, users can access a river of the latest information on whatever topic they choose.

Increasingly people are turning to the web to find out what is happening right now – the recent protests in Iran are a perfect example (and a frequently mentioned one). But when you search for a term in a traditional search engine the results look very similar day after day. If a volcano is erupting, followers on the web do not want to read an old article about the properties of lava, however authoritative it may be. With the real-time web your results will be different every time, and often refresh before your eyes. So no out-of-date articles, and no need to wait for news; users have access to up-to-the-minute comments and images. They can find out what is happening at the heart of a demonstration or at the site of a volcanic eruption as the event is taking place.

The real-time web also tells you what topics everyone’s talking about.  Most real-time search engines display trending topics, the most popular at that moment, and many can sort results by categories such as sport or entertainment. Want to know what your colleagues will be talking about at work tomorrow? A real-time search will probably tell you.

But a real-time search will probably also tell you all the information you didn’t want to know, or didn’t care about. Aside from rumours becoming gospel faster than you think possible, the current main disadvantage of real-time search engines is their inability to filter unwanted messages or irrelevant noise from results. The river just keeps on flowing regardless of what it has picked up along the way.

Collecta have openly stated they are currently paying no regard to relevancy in their results. Oneriot, however, have begun to experiment with reliability by introducing Pulserank, a toolbar which not only takes into account the freshness of the information, but also the authority of the website and person posting the information, alongside the velocity of the information passing around the whole web. The potential for the tool is huge, but although this seems like a reasonable approach, it may not catch something important as fast as simply watching the unadulterated stream.

Although far from fully effective, the Pulserank toolbar does pave the way for the necessary filters which real-time searching will require as the phenomenon grows. More users will undoubtedly lead to more spam and more noise being generated, increasing the need for an effective filter barrier. The challenge for real-time search engines is to combine recency, relevancy and reliability in their results without becoming elitist and losing the organic chatter of the online crowd.

Problems aside, the current animation surrounding the technology should lead to exciting developments. One such possibility being the use of real-time internet searching as an alert system – by signaling variations in the stream of mentions for a particular query, any abnormal rise in the quantity of chatter would trigger a notification. So the future of real-time search is bright, if hazy. Entrepreneur Edo Segal believes that old-school search will never vanish, but real-time news will create a society where we have an omnipresent sense of the moment.

Culture, future, google, news, real-time, search, technology

It seems that nowadays every new invention or gadget is set to; “change the way we see the world”. Indeed, “changing the way you see the world” has become the tagline for numerous coaching books and novel technologies alike. A simple google search produces thousands of results showing article after article exploring how facebook, twitter, myspace and the numerous other current internet phenomena’s are changing the way we see the world. I do not doubt for a second that these various websites are changing the way we communicate, socialise, do business and essentially live our day-to-day lives. However, when I wake up in the morning, eat my banana and begin my commute, the world still looks the same. In fact it has done for years, the only thing that changes the way I see the world is the weather and the varying condition of my eyes, depending upon alcohol or pollen consumption. Could that all be about to change? Augmented reality really does change the way we see the world.

Augmented reality (AR) is essentially a view of the real world with a virtual overlay. The current rate of research and development devoted to AR suggests it is going to take off in a big way with astonishing potential across all sectors. If this is the case, it is highly likely that AR will become one of the most influential technological shifts yet experienced by our civilisation.

The potential uses of AR are limitless. Developers have already been working on AR based games, whereby users can actively navigate and interact with various scenarios, using their iPhones. The practical uses of AR are equally as revolutionary; wikitude is a piece of software which uses AR as a platform allowing you to browse the world and discover information about places and points of interest. One of the first augmented apps to go live in the iPhone apple store was acrossair, allowing users to see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation location, how many kilometers and miles away they are and what tube lines they are on, all by simply loading the app and looking through the camera of your iPhone. Thus it appears that AR technology is giving the user powers that were once exclusively reserved for superhero’s. You can start to understand why so many tech buffs are getting excited about AR.

Whilst the entertainment and practical uses of AR are groundbreaking, its potential in education is just beginning to be explored and might well be the most exciting development yet. British schools are constantly being scrutinised and criticised. One of the greatest obstacles impeding learning in the classroom are those disengaged pupils whose behaviour suffer as a result, which in turn hampers everyone’s learning. If AR could be successfully incorporated into the classroom we might have a solution to the vicious cycle which is preventing successful learning in classrooms. Even our most modern, advanced educational institutions (universities) are frustratingly outmoded in terms of teaching students. True learning is experiential. Humans learn best by doing, not by reading or listening to lectures. The more senses are involved (sound, sight, touch, emotions, etc.), the more powerful the learning experience. That’’s why today’’s best teachers are those pioneering individuals who take the effort to engage their students in meaningful activities that reach students at multiple levels. AR has the very real potential to do this.

Imagine if instead of simply reading about the Battle of Hastings in books, pupils were able to interact with the books and watch the battles. Pupils could interact with 3D shapes in maths, take tours through the human body in biology, learn geography by “flying” around the globe, visiting any city they wished, zooming in and out of detailed renderings of geopolitical regions. Students could learn chemistry by observing, at a simulated microscopic level, chemical structures and reactions. These are but a few of the many potential applications. Augmented reality has the potential to be a very powerful educational tool, which might have a radical impact on the classroom.

Despite the clear benefits AR will have on our day to day lives, it is also necessary to approach the technology with some caution.  Augmented reality will essentially mean that the web will become something we carry with us as a constant presence, which is quite a daunting thought. It is almost as though virtual world is being released from its controlled zoo (computers, PDA’s and phones) into the open.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, yet mixing the virtual environment and the real world is something we want to get right. The benefits particularly for the education sector mean that it is a technological advancement certainly worth pursuing but we have to be ready, the question is how prepared can you be when reality is about to change. AR gives the opportunity for commercial organisations to bombard us with advertisements and governments to mould our thinking and actions. If advertisers and governments gain the ability to project anything they want into a person’’s immediate environment and make it seem real, there is no limit to the control that could be exercised over the general public.

Nonetheless it is undoubtedly one of the most exciting technological advancements for decades and it will surely touch all of our lives some way. It may be impossible to prepare for the AR revolution but we should accept that we really are about to see the world in a different way.

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The idea that digital media evolves via an avalanche of “revolutions” must be attributed to the frenzy with which the press seize upon emerging concepts. Mobile apps are no exception: they are regarded as a transformative power emerging over the whole of the digital landscape, after which nothing will be the same again.

The prodigal success of the iPhone app store is no doubt a catalyst for both this media attention, and for a chain reaction of mobile app production. The revolution is with us,  but, we hear, this frenzied work will soon give way to the lull of traditional format wars (beta-max vs VHS style).

We are probably not going to arrive at some universal format: the hardware on these different mobile devices is always going to vary,  and sometimes innovation has to depart from the norm. The plethora of platforms out there at the moment is indeed a headache for developers who want their app to be available for the whole range of devices, but what should really be of concern is the points at which corporate control over formats can stifle creativity simply for capital gain.

Apple’’s recent denial to give Google Voice permission to be a part of its app store is more than another installment in its saga of opaque decision making. This action is not opaque at all: the motivating factor was clearly fear of competition from a service that can provide an innovative new means of telecommunications.  Of course, Apple cannot stop an app being produced for other platforms, but its denial of access to a significant segment of the market can certainly sap the app”’’s momentum.

With this in mind, it is no surprise that Spotify have been stirring up as much media attention for its new iPhone app, as they can manage. This is not just a matter of good marketing – it is about building a deterrent for the Apple censors, who are currently mulling the app over. The analogy with Google Voice is clear: this is another core competitor with the iPhone”’’s functionality – it allows users to not just stream, but also to cache playlists of music on their mobile device, potentially rendering much of the appeal of the iPod rather redundant.

While Google may be reeling from Apple’’s denial of Voice, they are also setting their sights on a new future of applications.  They are attempting to raise another wave of hype, still waiting on the game-changing revolution heralded by cloud computing.

In a  recent talk at MobileBeat 2009, Google’’s Vice President for Strategy, Vic Gundotra, painted a picture of the apps market where this recent frenzy of downloading apps is a recent kink in a longer process by which software services are served via the cloud, universally accessible through the browser, the only piece of software a mobile device would need. If he is right, the whole discussion of mobile app format wars could itself become obsolete.

Whether we see cloud apps catch on at quite the level Google anticipates is yet to be seen (a key indicator will be whether the upcoming Chrome OS revitalises the netbook market, and convinces the public that they really don”t need to “have” their applications residing on their systems at all). But the internet is the paradigm of open innovation, and any future that increases the ability to elude censorship has to be a positive development: cloud-served apps would certainly be a step in the right direction.

apple, apps, google, Mobile