Saturday - astonishing

It's been really busy, really lively and incredibly worthwhile.

BETT Friday

By far and away it's always the busiest day at BETT. And this year was no exception. On the Guroo stand, we had the highest number of visitors ever to our stand, the most number of orders and a genuine buzz about the whole day.

One thing we have noticed is something we have done to ourselves - when we first started coming to BETT we listed ourselves as 14-19 resources by Guroo and we still are listed - we are the first entry in the catalogue. But perhaps we should have changed to Guroo Functional Skills for this year as we've had a number of visitors say they couldn't find us on the map. I guess this is a sign of our success in the market and indeed the newsletter has a lot to do with that.

Back to the show, an enormous rainstorm at around 3.30m almost put a dampener on the typical afternoon drop off in numbers but on the whole, visitors to the stand kept rolling in until around 4pm when it seemed that everyone went home after the rain ended.

In terms of functional skills, I didn't find any more providers around the place - it was also noticeable that companies who did a lot of work for Diplomas were also absent and I'm thinking here about u-xplore in particular. I suppose this is a sign of the times and despite being a truly engaging and excellent qualification that students and teachers love, maybe the diploma is just a bit expensive, complex and indeed too rigorous compared to other "vocational" qualifications.

That's it for now, look out for the newsletter on Tuesday.

BETT Thursday

Day over - nowhere near as busy with visitor numbers than previous years in my view. Lots of International visitors first thing (they will have stayed over from Wednesday).

Peak times it was busy - we have 5 pods on the guroo stand and all were fully utilised with queues waiting but in a similar way to Wednesday, it sort of died at about 3pm.

I did get a chance to walk the show and look for other Functional Skills resources. BKSB are here of course and after the show finished yesterday, we did get a chat and a drink with them which was nice. Vision2learn have one level 2 English resource, Promethean Planet has some functional skills resources that are free to download abd indeed, TES has lots as well.

Boardworks have lots of Diploma resources and I personally like them, although they don't have anything for Functional Skills yet - I do hope we can help them out with this!

What was surprising for me was that i haven't yet spotted any tiny companies (like we were three years ago) popping up and doing things in the Functional Skills resource areas.

On our side, Guroo 2.0 is going really well. New customers like it, becuase it's a complete product with no gaps in the essential areas. Existing custoemrs like it becuase it now does what they asked for - so telling your suppliers what you want really does work.

I do feel that friday will be good - more tomrrow!

Off and running

Even in these times of educational uncertainty, one of the few things that are certain is that everyone at BETT does try really hard to make it a good show.

My personal feeling is that there are more empty stands (where it's booked and no-one turned up) there is more ailse space (where EMAP haven't sold out) so they have put in chairs and circulation space to make it a more spacious show, and the very big Government stands (Becta, QCA etc) are noticeable through their absence. Actually, the space where the Government stands were has been very effectively filled by others.

As for us, we're delighted so far, an impressive stand which has drawn many compliments from visitors and indeed competitors. Lots of happy and ethusiastic staff who are welcoming to everyone and totally committed to making a visit to the Guroo stand a great experience.

So Wednesday is down and it went well, leads up, orders booked, busy and no disappointments (other than the price of beer in the pub across the road)

Tomorrow, I'll do a report on Functioonal Skills activity - I didn't really get a chance today to walk enough of the show.

Best wishes - Jonathan , currently resident at the Easy Hotel, Earls Court and stand J11 Olympia!

BETT stand build picture

This is what a BETT stand looks like at 4.30pm on Monday with a full day to go of building.

I think you could say it's pretty clear what our stand is all about!

BETT Week

I shall be doing my best to update my Blog daily from Wednesday with BETT updates focussed on Functional Skills but with a close eye on Foundation Learning and Diplomas.

Making Sense of Functional Skills newsletter Jan 4th

Key Skills exemption extended but confirmation that Functional Skills is here to stay!

On 7th December, John Hayes (Skills Minister) wrote to ALP, TASSC, AoC and FAB following their representations about their members not being ready to implement Functional Skills in Apprenticeships. Whilst Functional Skills, GCSE (with enhanced functional content) and Key Skills will run in parallel until September 2012 for Apprenticeships only, it's clear that Functional Skills are the future. Three quotes we picked out ....

"I do remain committed to the principle that Apprenticeship frameworks should deliver Functional Skills. I do hope that you will continue to work with my officials, as a matter of urgency, to make progress towards resolving the issues."

"I confidently expect full implementation of Functional Skills in Apprenticeships from Sept 2012."

The request for research into Key Skills was flatly refused "Functional Skills is a different type of qualification altogether and I think that such research would have limited value."

BETT 2011

The BETT Show is held at Olympia from Wednesday 12th to Saturday 15th January. We did a search of all exhibitors to see who was focusing on Functional Skills and Foundation Learning and the following companies came out on top:

• Guroo - J11, National Hall Main Floor.
• CIA Training - SW26, National Hall Gallery.
• BKSB - T10, National Hall Gallery.
• Creating Careers - SW4, National Hall Gallery
• Amazing Interactives - L49, National Hall Main Floor.
• Developing and Embedding ICT Functional Skills - presentation by Kathryn Tipper in Gallery 2 on Thursday at 5pm.

Making Sense of Functional Skills - presentation by Jonathan Wells in the Software theatre SW5 on Thursday at 1pm

My Functional Skills

My Functional Skills (TM) is a brand new feature of Guroo 2.0, developed in response to customers wanting tracking, reporting and diagnostic tools.

Every learning task and challenge in Guroo 2.0 is now tagged to the relevant Functional Skills criteria. At the end of each activity, students assess how their skills are developing.

These combine with the results from Functional Skills quiz questions, marks from teacher assessments and other inputs to give teachers a picture of activity and progress, and a diagnostic view of strengths and weaknesses.

And with top level results shown graphically as a series of "traffic lights" it's incredibly easy to use.

Click here for a short video - My Functional Skills is featured at 8:35.