In week 4 Hopspots attended the BETT-show in London. BETT is short for British Educational Training and Technology show, which is held in January every year. BETT is a great chance for everyone within the educational field to get new ideas and inspiration for new ways of using technology in teaching. At the show we met both giant companies such as: LEGO, INTEL; MICROSOFT; as well as small and newly established companies.

We were located together with all the newly established companies and it was a great experience! There were so many new ideas present in that one room, and it was vibrating with activity. It was quite the adventure examining the BETT FUTURE area, our area. Even teachers, headmaster and distributors from all over the world found the place extremely inspiring.

We talked to people from all over Europe, South America, South Korea, and even New Zealand. What an experience! We have been jumping and laughing a lot. Hopspots’ target audience is children between the age of 2 and 10, and children with disabilities, but the teachers also saw potential in using Hopspots for older children for instance in after school care and even in the eldercare sector. We got so much positive feedback that we started thinking of going in more directions than our current one and try to go outside the borders of Denmark. When and where that is going to be we will have to looks further into, but we are definitely open to the opportunity.

2017 is going to offer a lot of new and exciting tech-trends. In London we saw how programming of robots dominated all trends, and moving out of the classroom via virtual reality, which was a big hit to teachers and pupils. There were many suggestions for use of technology/IT in teaching. These were just a few examples.

A lot of companies, both big and small, focus on teaching children to program robots. That gets you thinking… why? Besides from the fact that making a toy “come to life” is fun, it provides children will skills to develop, plan and execute. Before making a robot capable of walking, dancing or jumping you have to learn how to programme and plan. Children start to think like adults and they learn how to cooperate.

As mentioned above, being in a virtual classroom was also quite the hit. Imagine that you are standing in your classroom and when you put on the VR-glasses you are in an entirely different place.

But what is VR? Briefly explained VR means virtual reality and is a computer-generated world. VR is about creating a realistic feeling of being present in a computer-generated world.

Imagine learning about the planets. Would you prefer to sit down and read about it or actually being present in space while listening to descriptions and stories about the planets? Or learning about the animals of the rainforest.

Not only will children be intrigued by being present in the story they are listening to, it is also much easier for them to remember the content of the teaching when they experience it with their own eyes.

Adobe brought something really interesting to BETT. Now it’s easier for children to learn how to animate. In the video below you can see that by use of the camera in the computer the figure is able to follow your gestures and facial expressions.

This was our first time at the BETT-show and it is definitely not going to be our last! We met so many new people from all over the world and everybody was so open-minded about using new technologies in teaching. We definitely made more friends and got new contacts around the world!

Come and join us in London next year. It is a new world for teachers and managers. It is worth RECOMMENDING! BETT-show is held again from January 24^th-27^th 2018 in EXCEL London. To register or just to satisfy your curiosity check out the link: http://www.bettshow.com/ .