Ruth Kelly officially opens the BETT Show 2005.

11th February 2005

BETT is the World's leading educational ICT event. Running annually since 1984, BETT is the showcase for innovation and developments and regularly attracts an audience in excess of 24,000 educationalists. This year the exhibition ran from the 12th-15th January and was held at London’s prestigious Olympia hall. The show was a runaway success, with huge crowds of educational professionals attending, all eager to view and test the latest innovations in education technology.

With embedding ICT at the heart of the government's new five-year strategy for children and learning, BETT 2005 was dedicated to highlighting the continually rising standards in the provision and implementation of ICT in education.

Ruth Kelly, DfES Secretary of State officially opened the show in a public address where she spoke of how she saw "ICT and its potential to transform how we teach, learn and communicate as crucial to our drive to raise standards." She went on to say "I want every child, every young person, every learner, wherever they are, to achieve their full potential. ICT has an important place in making that possible. By aiding teaching and learning. By opening up new ways to learn and new places to learn in. By extending choice. By allowing greater tailoring to the individual. By opening up education to parents."

With thousands of educational software, hardware, online, multimedia and IT support products and services on display, this event has become the only opportunity in the education calendar where people can establish the best products for their institution from the entire range of leading educational suppliers. Becta and the DfES both had a strong presence at the show with representatives on-hand to offer helpful advice and guidance for visitors to the stands.

Videoconferencing had a strong representation at the show with industry giants Polycom and Tandberg both making an appearance. Polycom took the oppertunity to introduce their new ClassStation VSX solutions and ran a timetable of video link-ups to institutions around the World. Visitors were given the opportunity to interact and experiment with the communications technology first hand. The focus this year was all about 'breaking th barriers to distance education' by 'exciting the student' and 'empowering the teacher'.

For more information on videoconferencing in education, please call us on +44 (0) 1628 484446.