Now that we have literally thousands of users, we at Whizz can begin to see the exercises which are more of a struggle than others, and frankly there are exercises we must  improve to ensure  that the children do really understand the learning objective all the time. A  Certain of our tests get failed much more than others which could be about the test or the animation which preceded it as we know, for example, that many children struggle with telling the time on an analog clock. Mine did, how about yours?

Occasionally we find that we have been too hard on our users. In one of our exercises for 7 year olds, we didn’t realise (until the consistently high failure rate convinced us!) that we were expecting them to be familiar with 3x, 4x and 5x number facts when at that age level, the curriculum requires only 2x and 10x knowledge. Hopefully now, many fewer of our children will have to face repeating one of the 7 year old animated exercises over and over again.

Many of the other most highly failed animated exercises are Rapid Recall ones. They are usually fun to do and frankly if they get failed a lot, it’s no bad thing if the child has to do them again. In a few cases, we are going to review the times we allow for the answer to be given. But we don’t want that time to be long enough to use a calculator or to go and find Dad! We’ve got some other ideas up our sleeve for this issue but it would be great to hear some suggestions from our users. So please do let us know what you think.

With tests we know we have to find a balance between going slightly beyond how we have taught the learning objective- without going beyond, you can’t always test whether the point of the exercise has been understood- and taking too big a step. We know we haven’t always got that balance right and are fine tuning where necessary. There’s no sense in having a test which only a tiny minority can pass first time, and condemning children to excessive repeats of the same animation.

In the Parent Dashboard we have through Exercise Preview given parents the possibility of allowing their child to skip repeating an animation but it’s a nuclear option which we would rather never had to be used!

Care to comment on any of these issues? We would love to hear your thoughts!

It is in both these respects that BETT has chosen to shortlist us for their 2011 BETT Awards:

BETT Awards 2011

BETT, as any fule kno, is “the world’s largest technology in education show.” The awards fall on the first night of the four-day show. Any fan of ed. tech. who has been to the awards or the show in recent years will attest to the scale, snazziness, and the impressive number of Madonna-style headsets worn by shiny-faced presenters in front of tennis-court-sized interactive whiteboards.

In the time since Whizz started attending – first as guests, and for the last five years as stand-holders – we’ve seen the event get glossier and more corporate. We don’t yet have Madonna-style headsets (The God of Whizz wouldn’t be seen dead, etc.) but we always have interested packs of teachers, parents, and students stopping by, some just to say hi, and many more to find out what makes us tick.

This interest goes both ways, and that’s why we come every year. We love to find out what we’re doing right, and what we can improve on. So if you want to bend our ears about Maths-Whizz, or tell us what you love, or just put faces to names in the Whizz team, then make sure you’re at BETT 2011 at London’s Olympia, 12-15th January.

Who knows, we may even have a shiny award to show you!

You can read up about our 2010 BETT Show and our previous triumphant BETT Award showing.

UPDATE (22/10/10): Bett Awards official shortlist now available to view online.

Maths-Whizz in Birmingham!

The God of Whizz needs a slap on the wrist. Whizz went to Birmingham’s NEC at the beginning of the month to show off Maths-Whizz to thousands of teachers and administrators who attended the Education Show 2010 and here, belatedly, is a brief round-up of the proceedings.

Whizz was shortlisted in two categories for the Education Show Awards (ERA Awards) – Supplier of the Year and Exporter of the Year. The show was another great opportunity to mix it amongst teachers and administrators who know and love Maths-Whizz, and those have yet to see the light (for shame!).

To correct the latter, Customer Service manager Natalie M, Product Manager Natalie S, and Sales Wizard Liam showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to spread the word. The Nats had already done sterling work organising our presence at the show and managing our award entries.

Liam, Nat, and Nat!

Read on…!

Whizz Education was exhibiting at the ‘BETT Boulevard‘, a showcase of BETT-show veterans at its Birmingham equivalent, and our corner stand was well-placed to bring in the punters.

Anecdotal feedback from the Birmingham show so far is extremely positive –
visitors were motivated to hear about what we had to offer, more oriented towards education (rather than business, as we found at BETT) and happy to chat about Maths-Whizz after the show.

To illustrate the point, here’s Liam in his element – surrounded by future fans of online maths tutoring.

He does requests...

...see!

Towards the end of the show the Nats got into their glad rags and headed to the awards ceremony.

Look! It's Whizz!

Whizz Education will be exhibiting at stand S8E (floorplan) from the 4th-6th March. The fair Natalies will be on hand to guide visitors through the delights of Maths-Whizz Tutoring and Teachers’ Resource tools, fresh from our awards shortlisting at BETT 2010.

To get a sense of what we’ll be up to, you can check out our Whizz Education exhibitor page or stroll down the ‘Education Show BETT Boulevard‘.

If you’re not sure what The ‘BETT Boulevard’ is (and I wasn’t), the AV Interactive blog helpfully explains:

A selection of exhibitors from the BETT show have been chosen to showcase their products at the Education Show 2010, which runs from 4-6 March at the NEC, Birmingham.
Due to growth in exhibitor demand, BETT Boulevard has been expanded and is now located in the For Your School area. Some of the exhibitors featured in BETT Boulevard include NumberGym Software Rentnote, Whizz Education, Rapid English Consultants and Spysure.

The Education Show 2010 is free to attend and is the UK’s largest exhibition of educational resources, regularly attracting over 15,000 visitors.

UPDATE: Read our belated report on the Birmingham Education Show 2010.

(BETT Show 2010 Maths Whizz team)

The Show

BETT got a hammering from Mother Nature this year with thick snow and icy conditions for the first half of the run and torrential winter rain for its final – busiest – day. Despite this we’re pretty pleased with how we fared at our little 6x1m gallery stand, overlooking some considerably larger marketing budgets and teams of rictus-grinned reps in the main hall below.

The team picture above shows the stand in all its mend-and-make-do glory, but omits three Whizz VIPs – Natalie (who organised our presence at the show), Manesh (master of Teachers’ Resource and many others) and Nic (fantastically overworked Systems Architect).

Having living and breathing product, customer service, curriculum, design and sales experts on the stand was something of a change from some of our larger competitors’ stands – together we know more about our products than anyone else. It would be nice to think we got that interest and expertise across to the hundreds of passersby we mugged for Maths-Whizz.

We had to improvise a little to make the most of our narrow spot with the excellent view – spray painting company letters in an abandoned stand up the corridor, frantically cutting and glueing on the carpet on Tuesday and Wednesday. But we proudly showed off our BETT Award nominations and mounted them alongside product images and charts demonstrating the efficacy of our online maths tutor.

A highlight of the show was the presence of the gloriously-coiffed Whizz Prof (below, accosting Product Manager Nat). Some of our international guests even demanded photos from the man himself. We’re wondering how best to monetize him for BETT 2011 – win a date with the Prof?

(The Maths-Whizz Prof at BETT Show 2010)

The Awards

London’s Park Lane Hilton was the venue for Wednesday’s BETT awards ceremony. The God of Whizz admits he was a bit impressed at the array of fine DJs and dresses for what is, basically, a trade show jolly – albeit one with a great reputation.

We had a table all to ourselves and we had dragged along two guests to join in the fun – Pat Workman of Hackney LEA and Anna Evans of Harvington School.

(Maths-Whizz Team at the BETT Awards table)

The show kicked off with some fantastically dull introductory words from the BETT organiser and one of the show’s sponsors. It can be difficult to jazz up an educational technology awards show, I’ll admit, but the thumping dance music that accompanied the speakers to the podium – and drained the will to live during the (excellent) meal – only served to make them seem less interesting.

Even so, wine was poured, drunk, poured again, re-ordered with the financial director’s credit card, and poured again for good measure. A good time was had by all.

The comedian-host managed to split the difference between sarcastic flippancy about an industry awards gig and sincerity about the achievements of which we were all – justly – proud, and he rattled through the categories in good time.

(Maths-Whizzers Natalie, Richard, Natalie and Ray)

Whizz Education was nominated in two categories – ICT Exporter of the Year, and ICT Education Partnership – an achievement matched by just one other company, I believe.

We failed to take home a gong in either case, but we were extremely happy to be there, and to have been recognised for the work we’ve done selling Maths-Whizz into the UAE, USA and India (Exporter of the year) and the development work with Worksop college and John Turner. We can only applaud Learning Possibilities and Manic Monkey, winners in the Partnership and Exporter categories, respectively, for their successes.

(The Proud BETT Awards 2010 winners)

The awards finished with an exhortation to get dancing in a narrow area below the stage set aside for such shindiggery. Whizzers mostly avoided cutting a rug, but promised to return to BETT 2011 with something to dance about…

The awards for which Whizz is a finalist are:

This is fab news, but for those of you not fully au fait with the world of educational technology, some background might be in order. The BETT awards accompany the annual British Educational Training and Technology show, held at London Olympia.

The BETT show is generally held to be Europe’s largest educational technology event, and is a huge draw for forward-thinking educators and industry from the rest of the world.

It’s therefore an honour to be shortlisted alongside companies like Encyclopedia Britannica and Promethean.

We’ll keep you posted on how we get on. Keep your fingers crossed!

UPDATE: Visit us at Stand R34 from the 13th to the 16th January 2009.

UPDATE (20/01/10): Get the report from the BETT Show 2010 and our showing at Wednesday’s awards ceremony, with pics!

 We are exhibiting at the R-E-M area – Stand F46 – armed with an interactive whiteboard, special offers and competitions. We’re close to the coffee stand, on the ground floor. Check the map here.

 BETT is free to visit – so come along and meet the Whizz team and see what’s happening in the world of education technology. We look forward to meeting you!

UPDATE (2010) – See how Whizz Education fared two years later at BETT Show 2010