The three presentations will be made available online (probably through Slideshare) but they are aimed at different audiences – so a quick run down below for those who want to start filling in those new Christmas calendars!

BCH is appearing three times at the BETT show – a free trade show for anyone interested in new technologies for education, held at London’s Olympia. Be great to meet some of you – and there’s also a brilliant freebie for anyone who visits us there!

The first is on Wednesday 14th January (3pm) , which will share some of the early developments of a toolkit to support strategic thinking and planning for educational change. The session will be particularly of use to education leaders involved large scale investments in education, such as Building Schools for the Future and Primary Capital Programmes. The toolkit builds on work from Futurelab and the evidence developed as part of the DCSF/Futurelab  Beyond Current Horizons The presentation will share some of this background before showcasing some of the developments of the toolkit that brings together a number of resources to support educational visioning; collaborative workshop techniques, and that uses a range of evidence to inform strategic planning. A quick 30 minute burst of how BCH may be of use to you in the New Year (on the DCSF’s Policy into Practice stand)

Second is a presentation on Saturday 17th January (12.30), also on the DCSF’s Policy into Practice stand. This presentation will provide more detail about what the programme is trying to achieve and present some of the emerging findings. In particular, it will present some of the current and emerging socio-technological trends and the implications for realising the goals of the Children’s Plan as well as the potential impact on learners, teachers, industry and learning institutions in the future. Particularly of use if you want to understand why long-term futures thinking is of use in education.

The third presentation is also on Saturday 17th January (2pm), in Seminar room C of Olympia. This presentation is more geared for teachers as it will introduce and share the ‘Innovations Handbook‘, the new, free resource from Futurelab that aims to help teachers and school leaders to develop innovative approaches to learning and teaching by offering practical tools, advice and argument to support changing practices. The presentation also talks about Beyond Current Horizons but the focus will be more about how emerging trends challenge current practice. In particular, by presenting both ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ and the ‘Innovations Handbook’, the aim is to offer visions of long-term futures whilst providing the tools for teachers and schools leaders to shape their schools’ near term futures.

And finally – there may be a brief outline of BCH at the BETT TeachMeet – but more importantly that event will provide a great opportunity to hear, first hand, some of the amazing work going on in schools at the moment.

Over the coming week I will write a summary of the findings as the conversations were really rich and included the views of wide range of experts.  One group was investigating some of the possible implications of a mobile workforce set within an aging society where the development of smart drugs provided new opportunities (and concerns) for the aims, methods and roles of education.

A summary is here – and thanks to Steve Wells, the Director of Informing Choices for his facilitation and for the steve-wells-cosmetic-psycopharmacology-workshop-notes.