I didn’t have as much time today to visit exhibitors as our team had a meeting with RM, with whom we work closely, and I went to a seminar.

Although I’m sure I’ve walked past every exhibitor by now, there are still some that I’ve only glanced at. Some are avoided because they’re of no interest; some hurried past to avoid predatory young women who want to thrust more unwanted brochures into already straining carrier bags; some ignored because the salesmen seem more interested in chatting to each other than customers; some not noticed because of poor displays and some missed simply because they’re so busy.

The hot product this year is the Virtual Learning Environment with several companies offering competing technologies. Whatever the weaknesses of Glow, at least in Scotland we will have one system and will be able to share across the country. Without some strong guidance from Becta, England’s schools will become isolated within propriatory systems.

I had a look at Podium today. I approached it fairly sceptically as it isn’t that difficult to put a podcast together using free software like Audacity and then linking it to a blog. Having seen a demo, I now think that this would be a good way to encourage reluctant, less ict-confident teachers to get involved in podcasting. Podium provides a simple interface which takes the user all the way from recording the podcast to posting it with an RSS feed. The only techie part is done when the software is first installed and the user has to enter the path to the required ftp server. I’ve ordered one to try out with kids.

Having mentioned the Digital Movie Creator yesterday, I came across a competitor - the Tuff-Cam from TTS. It has a very similar specification to the DMC but appears a little tougher. Its weakness is the lack of classroom software and as pupils find the DMC software very easy to use, the Tuff-Cam may find it difficult to replace the Digital Movie Creator in classrooms.

Just a quick word in praise of the Lego NXT Starter set available from Commotion (amongst others). Control Technology doesn’t seem to be popular with many teachers but the Lego materials make control technology exciting for older children.

Amazing-Grades has a number of free podcasts for download.

At the SEN area, I saw the MagniLink which is essentially a portable cctv camera which connects by usb to a laptop. This was a BETT winner last year but this is the first time I’ve seen it. Technology for the visually impaired is always expensive but this seems to be a very flexible way of providing classroom support.

I went to see Miles Berry & Terry Freedman’s seminar Social Technologies and Learning in Your Classroom: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and More.

The seminar was full. I’m not very good at estimating crowds but I reckon there were about 250 people there. With only 45 minutes, the talk was rushed with no time for questions. Miles described the technologies and Terry gave exemplars. While there was little there to excite seasoned bloggers, it was a commendable attempt to summarise and exemplify WEB 2.0 technologies. The seminar presentation and accompanying video extracts can be downloaded here. A podcast of the seminar will be made available later.