By Friday I was all BETTed out. It was a shorter visit as were returning home so this will be a mix of final thoughts and things I omitted in the last 2 posts.

The whiteboard initiative in England has ensured that lots of companies are selling whiteboards and related software. The most interesting development has been the drop in price of short-throw projectors and the number of different ‘projector on a stick’ solutions with the projector being mounted in front of the whiteboard, often on a height-adjustable board. Given the total cost of a separate board, stand, projector and installation, these new boards don’t look nearly as expensive as they did last year and perhaps it’s now worth paying the premium for the ease of use that these boards bring.

There’s an advertising video from Promethean for their Activboard+2 which illustrates the advantages of a fixed short-throw projector on an adjustable stand.

I’ve always like the Promethean software for their boards but we have very few Promethean boards in our authority. Now they’ve launched a version of the software called Activprimary v3 which will work on any board. I hope to have a good look at this to see how useful it is within the Scottish context.

Visualisers have also come down in price and you can now buy a decent visualiser for under £1000. The Samsung range looked good at BETT.

One product that would have sold well would have been an inflatable chair. Any attempt to have coffee or a sandwich either involved a long wait for an empty table or sitting on the floor getting in everyone’s way. So there’s something for the product designers to think about for next year.