Chris Johnston takes a look at the award winners at BETT
Interactive whiteboard maker Promethean and software firm 2simple won two honours each in this year’s BETT Awards, presented in London last month at the annual technology show.
The whiteboard company picked up both the primary and secondary awards in the ICT hardware category for the ACTIVboard Plus. Promethean said its product enhanced teachers’ control of the learning environment and increased the impact of lessons.
Meanwhile, 2simple triumphed in the primary section of both the educational software and software tools categories for its Infant Video Toolkit. It contains six easy-to-use programs and more than 50 example video lessons to help pupils create letters, pictures, graphs and other documents.
The BETT Awards recognise and reward an organisation or company’s creativity, innovation and commitment in developing high quality and effective educational ICT resources. Now in their fourth year, over 300 products were nominated for the awards which are presented in 13 categories, with winners determined by votes from teachers.
The secondary educational software award went to 4Learning’s Macbeth CD-Rom, with Apple’s iDVD picking up the secondary software tools category. Crick Software’s Find Out and Write About series won the special educational needs software award.
The online learning resource category had awards for both free and subscription services. Acumedia’s Count On (www.counton.org) won the former, while Granada Learning’s Primary Zone took the latter.
The further education award went to Your Army CD-Rom, while another CD-Rom, Skills Factory’s New Literacy and Numeracy Complete Online, won the School Management Solution.
Cynnal’s NOF ICT training outclassed the competition to win the Support for ICT category and DCP Microdevelopments’ LogIT Explorer took the Top 20 award.
This year there were joint winners for the ICT Beyond the Classroom award, with 4Learning’s GridClub (www.gridclub.com) sharing the limelight with LJ Group and Norwich City FC Study Centre’s Extra Time Online.
No award was given in the Innovation category, although a special commendation was made for Time Education’s I-desk.
www.promethean.co.uk
www.2simplesoftware.com
www.4learning.co.uk
www.apple.comukeducation
www.cricksoft.com
www.granadalearning.com
www.army.mod.uk
www.skillsfactory.co.uk
www.cynnal.co.uk
www.dcpmicro.com
www.timeeducation.co.uk
