BETT UK 2026

I’ve heard quite a few people talk about their BETT experience so far, some their first time, others are veterans of the British Education Technology and Training show. The overriding feeling seemed to be a sense that after the AI hype of last year, there wasn’t really anything new this year other than a showcase of AI tools; the majority of which still seemed to be aimed at teachers and reducing workload. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few things this year that I really did appreciate (mostly people rather than tech!), but more on those things later. Let’s talk AI first…

Of all the talks, seminars and workshops I went to on the subject of AI (and there were A LOT), everyone seemed to be saying the same things as last year – How much is too much? Well it depends. How do we stop students cheating? Use this (expensive) tool. How do we keep student’s data safe? Well we just ask them not to share their personal information. Lots of AI technology for teachers to use, suggestions of tools for (secondary) students to use… But for me, there still doesn’t seem to be a robust approach to how to teach ABOUT it in schools. In particular, primary schools.

I firmly believe that pupils, at a primary level, need to explore what artificial intelligence is, and what it isn’t. Maybe a light touch on how it works, but we really should be teaching them (and modelling to them) that AI systems are not sentient, magic, clever or trustworthy. There is an air of mystery around AI technology that is harmful to our children in that early stage of discovery. One of the most important things to me is how children (and adults) easily personify AI systems and how that leads to misplaced trust and inherent belief in AI output. How many times have you used ‘AI’ as a proper noun in a sentence? Maybe even attributed some human traits? “AI made a mistake and told me this…” rather than “The AI system generated an incorrect output”.

Pedantic? You may think so, but I think it’s a good place to start the discussion off. One thing that shocked me while cruising around some of the BETT stalls was the sheer amount of anthropomorphism and personification going on. One Hong Kong company caused me to stop and engage in debate, as they were selling a system specifically designed for children (as young as early years) to disclose their feelings, emotions, and personal struggles with an AI chatbot, which then ‘snitched’ on them to the teacher. When I enquired further, it turns out that responses to the teacher are anonymised across the class and only a general ‘This many children said this’ account would be presented (but what’s the point of that, I asked, how can that be ‘early warning for intervention’ if it doesn’t tell you which child it is that needs support?) Apparently the AI bot suggests telling an adult should it detect anything it deems requiring. But once a child has disclosed their issues to what appears to be a friendly human-esq messenger system, why would they then go and tell another adult? I have SO many issues with this. Not to mention that it’s the teacher that should be knowing and understanding the pupils first and foremost, don’t leave that to an AI system. Maybe you can look them up, do a bit of research and let me know what you think?

One of the best things around AI that I witnessed was this:

AI Awareness Day! This is definitely what we need. Not ‘here are the tools you can use’, not ‘here are ways to save time’, not ‘here are cool things your students and pupils can do’, but LET’S BE AWARE! What is AI? How is it changing our world? What do we need to be careful of and watch out for? This I can get on board with. Put it in your diaries and visit the website to see how you can get involved.

Having said all that, there was one particular robotic exhibitor that really did make me go WOW! That was the OHBOT stall, not just because of their awesome robotic busts that interact with you, but their software – a block based programming language (similar to scratch) but with the ability to push and pull info from large language models. How they used it was very clever… The user would ask a question. That question, along with a standard block of text went into an AI prompt. In their standard block of text was an instruction: “Deliver the response to this question as a script between two characters, using their names and a : before their speech, and in brackets, select appropriate stage directions from this list…”. When the script came back from the LLM, the Ohbot software would detect who says what in the script and attribute it to each of the robot heads connected, then the stage directions would trigger a sequence of movements from the robots. Thus, a user would type in a questions and the two robots would then ‘answer’ in realtime, one with a cheeky mischievous sense of humour and the other solemn and serious, giving you your answer with a load of sass included. Yes, there is a TON of anthropomorphism and personification in there, but the way they executed it was so incredibly cool and clever.

Here are some pictures of other robots and general cool stuff…

But the best bit of BETT (try saying that without moving your mouth) was the people. A chance to hook up with all of my amazing friends and colleagues that work in the same sphere as me; computing in education. What a bunch of fantastic people!!

Most of all, I want to thank the wonderful people at Redfern Electronics who managed to listen to my plethora of ideas for their amazing product, the ‘Crumble’ (Which I’m sure you’ve all hear me rave about! If not, just go to my Physical Computing section and have a look…) and who also took me out for dinner and allowed me to hang out with them! Just for fun, here is Joseph from Crumble, actually eating a Crumble:

Also just for fun, as I posted after each day of the conference, I snuck in one of these gems in with my photos. Not sure anyone noticed the satire; more people complained that they were from CES26 rather than BETT!