Digital educational trends at BETT 2017

BETT, the global digital education fair, is held in London every year. Our employee now shares the trends she has observed there.

The BETT (British Educational Training and Technology Show), a global digital education fair, was held in London from January 25 to 28. This event brought together in four days more than 800 exhibitors, 528 speakers, a number of workshops and 34,500 visitors from 138 countries!

Since 1985, the BETT 's mission is to bring together people, ideas, ways of doing things and technologies in one place. Creating a better world by transforming education is its goal. The event covers five sectors: early childhood and primary, secondary, continuing education, students with special needs as well as training and learning in the workplace.

BETT is both a gigantic educational digital fair and an interesting conference. Throughout the four days, round tables, “hands-on” workshops and conferences take place jointly.

At the BETT Arena, located in the center of the show, lectures by “international stars” are presented as well as debates on hot topics of the day.

Other small spaces are aimed at specific clienteles:

• The International VIP Lounge, where the characteristics of digital education from different countries are presented;
• The French pavilion, inaugurated by Mrs. Axelle Lemaire, secretary of state in charge of digital technology and innovation;
• The Learn Live sectors, where various practical workshops are offered for elementary, secondary, continuing education and special education teachers;
• interest groups such as Microsoft Partner Village, HE @ BETT (for heads of higher education), the conference center for heads of establishments. the STEAM Village or the BETT Futures space (the corner of startups).

The main trends of the 2017 edition of BETT

At BETT 2017, hot topics for primary classrooms focused on student safety online and at school, parent-school relationships, international classroom projects, and concepts and programming methods.

As for secondary school, the main interests seemed to be the impact of social networks on the dialogue between parents, teachers and school administration, serious games as a support for learning, digital portfolios and collaborative work.

Initiation into programming from kindergarten to higher education, virtual reality, augmented or mixed to renew pedagogy and applications to facilitate differentiation of learning seem to be the trends of the moment.

To find out more, see also the overview in pictures of Jennifer Elbaz in Educavox, BETT 2017: but still?

Tomorrow, I will share with you some discoveries that I was able to make on the spot.