A brief post to put down what I am expecting from BETT (I will be attending over the next two days) and Learning Technologies (which I will hopefully be able to go to at least some of the free exhibition).
What I will see/hear:
- the economy’s improvements not being passed through to learning/education budgets
- even more BYOD over machine provision (with backlash from controlled/safe environment providers)
- more on HTML5/adaptive design, but with some vendors still pushing Flash items (including old off-the-shelf libraries which are not getting refreshed very quickly)
- learning by individuals circumnavigating their organizations’ expectations and limitations (via PLNs, MOOCs, informal over formal, etc) whilst others avoid learning altogether
- post-recession leadership crisis, risk of ‘The West’ losing out top-end talent jobs to the markets they have outsourced the manual work to previously (alongside concerns that India, Brazil and others are not becoming the sources of skilled labor that it had been presumed they would)
- more about academies (in school and workplace settings) and a disconnect between their supposed improvements in quality versus economies of scale and other loses
- infographics, video, diagrams and other visuals to replace boring old text – oh it is so 16th century 😉
- some cool stuff with 3D printers in subjects such as Physics and Design and Technology.
- Learning Record Stores vs Learning Management Systems (the latter being dead unless it is at the core of the organization’s way of operating).
What I will not see/hear:
- much in the way of evidence-based selling
- evidence of MOOCs being used to formally break organizational silos (both on the provider and learner side)
- a convincing argument that Tin Can, Learning Record Stores and Badges can come together in a automated enough way to avoid people ignoring them (ala ePortfolios).
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 
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