On Thursday 22nd January a couple of us from emc (Sophie and Ava) visited Bett 2015! The Bett show is a four day event held at the ExCel London and is the world’s leading learning technology event. The event inspirational for anyone involved in education and gives them the chance to engage with a world of learning excellence and discover the latest technology.

This year we looked at the common themes that ran throughout the show. One thing that stood out this year, more than previous years, was the focus on STEM subjects. Evidence that the many funding and campaign initiatives are now bearing fruit; with many more educational tools and materials helping teachers to inspire and educate students.

The other two areas where there was a lot focus were around coding and programming. So enabling teachers to understand the basics of programming and enabling them to deliver classes. There were also a number of 3D printers which whilst quite cool, we’re not quite sure how and where these will fit into the classroom.

As a design agency heavily involved in ELT and educational resources, we were interested to see what things could impact the learning language world. One thing that intrigued us was FlashSticks. FlashSticks are a learning tool and post-it note. Each post-it note is printed with a unique, commonly used word, translation, icon and phonetic. They’re colour-coded by gender as well; blue notes for masculine nouns, pink notes for feminine and green for all other word types. The printing technique used on the post-it notes enables you to scan it using the free FlashStick app. Once it has scaned the note, a tutor will pop up with the note and will help to pronounce the word/phrase. We thought this was brilliant!

Some of our other highlights