I’m honoured to announce that, as a passionate advocate for education technology, and its potential to deliver the implementation of transformative outcomes and drive forward the — oh, do you know, I’m sick of this drivel already. Here’s the situation:

I’ve gone through the Bett seminar programme, and highlighted the ones that I’d go to if (a) I could be in several places at once (I’m working on that) and (b) needed to know about a much wider range of issues than any person does.

In selecting the sessions, I have included the ones which appear to satisfy one or more of the following criteria:

• Presented by a teacher, or someone who has worked as a teacher for more than 5 minutes.

• Appear to be genuinely useful.

• An unusual topic, or unusual angle on a familiar topic.

• A niche area, such as a particular kind of special educational need.

I have excluded any that seem to tick any of the following boxes:

• Inclusion of these words in the description:

  • Leveraging

  • Empowering

  • Impact

  • Driving

  • Passion (thanks to Richard Smith for this one)

  • Transformational

  • Deliver

  • Mission

  • Jobs/skills of the future

  • Power (or any other noun) as a verb

  • Grit

• Sessions which seem to be purely self-promotional for the presenter.

• Sessions which seem to be a 30 minute long advertisement for a product or service — difficult to avoid, but some of them at least say you will go away with a list of ideas or strategies to try out.

• Sessions which have what seems like a tenuous connection with education, and computer education in particular.

• Sessions where the presenter appears to be someone who has never worked in a school but feels qualifies to tell teachers how to do their job.

• Sessions where the presenter has tweeted that they are honoured to be presenting. I was brought up to believe that self-praise is no recommendation, and I contend that so-called “humble brags” are prime examples of that.

I don’t claim to have been comprehensive in my choices — after all, there’s no point in simply reproducing the Bett seminar list. Nevertheless, I hope you find the outcome useful. My objective is simple: to bring to your attention sessions that look interesting and useful, and which you might have missed. I have no vested interest in any of them, except perhaps those hosted by the Technology, Pedagogy and Education Association, where I am a member of the committee.

My next task is to copy and paste the sessions into a document or two. So watch this space.