Dom Breadmore

It's taken a few days to sink in but on Friday I received confirmation that I had been selected to join this year's Google Teacher Academy in London. The news followed a rather nervous day following the awesome #gtauk hastag on Twitter and maniacally clicking send/receive on my inbox. Considering the wealth of inspiring and dedicated practitioners applying to be involved I am a little overwhelmed and humbled to have been selected to train to become a Google Certified Teacher.

The annual technology conference at Olympia has been a regular southward pilgrimage for the last few years. It’s a great opportunity to wander endless halls of tech companies touting their wares, to get a feel for the new trends in EdTech and see new product launches.

There’s also a whole host of branded pens, canvas bags and squeezy polar bears that will save me hastily buying any beefeater or routemaster tat for the kids on my return.

If I am completely honest, I must admit that this year I failed to see any truly ground breaking new products or services that I felt were ready to revolutionise learning. In fact I saw some real stinkers.

It made me particularly happy to see Zulogic downstairs for the first time on a stand that seemed to give their great piece of stop-frame animation Zu3D the attention it deserves. I’ve been using Zu3D with primary and secondary classes for the last couple of years and am yet to find another package that offers the same functionality within a user interface that really works for both pupils and teachers. You shouldn’t support Zulogic because they are a small family business (the kind of business that spend weeks designing and making their own exhibition stand complete with giant giraffe) but because they deliver a fantastic product with a personal and focussed level of support.

I suppose this brings me to the real reason that I visit BETT each year, people.

The real magic of an event like BETT lies in the fact that educators and practitioners from across the world find themselves together. Teachmeet BETT 2012 (and its accompanying TeachEat) was again superb, an enlightening and uplifting few hours surrounded by hard working practitioners, sharing the experiences of using technology in the classroom. Next year I will also do everything I can to make it to Collabor8 For Change as I’m frankly a little disappointed in myself for two consecutive years of failing to be there.