Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! shortlisted for BETT Awards 2012

Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! has been shortlisted for the final of the BETT Awards 2012 in the Early Years Digital Content category... and we’re very excited about it!

The BETT Show is the British Educational Training and Technology Show, the annual showcase for the use of information technology in education in the UK. It takes place at Olympia in London and has been running, in one form or another, since 1985.

I think I first went there as a teacher back in 1998 or thereabouts. Since then I’ve been to BETT most years and I’ve seen it from both sides of the fence; in various incarnations as a teacher and ICT coordinator; and as an exhibitor speaking to teachers and demonstrating software. The show is an amazing collection of all the best in ICT educational resources and every year I’ve come away inspired to do something new.

However, one of the overwhelming memories of my visits to BETT is ‘Exhibition Leg’, a variant of ‘Museum Leg’, often accompanied by ‘Exhibition Back’ and ‘Tradeshow Neck’; the aches and pains that quickly set in from the slow-wandering around a hall and the long periods of standing still, enthralled by some magic new gadget. Add to that the arm ache from carrying a hundredweight of free pens, badges, catalogues, sweets and promotional knick-knacks, pilfered from every stand, and you certainly feel like you’ve earned that sit down on the train back home... if you can get a seat!

The BETT Awards winners are announced each year at the BETT Show. They reward the best creative and innovative ICT products and services in the world of education. I’ve followed them closely over the years and I’ve used many of the winning packages in my own teaching. That’s why I’m so excited about Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! having been shortlisted for this year’s final. Lugo Learning has only been around for just over a year now, so it’s a great honour to be in such good company in the Early Years Digital Content category. Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! is up against the best in the business and we’re really proud to be there.

We’d like to thank all our users who continue to provide us with feedback and help us to develop our software and make a difference to children’s learning in the Early Years. We’re working on some exciting new projects at the moment... but more of that later. For now, we’re very much looking forward to joining all the other finalists at the BETT Awards on 11^th January 2012.

It’s black tie. I’ll be the nervous one wrestling with a bow tie and nursing my Exhibition Leg.

See Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! at www.LugoLearning.co.uk

Developing children's independence

Garretts Green Children's Centre have been using Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! for a year now.

Garretts Green, in Birmingham, purchased Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! in October 2010. They were looking for some software to develop children’s independence in the area of ICT.

Over the year of our study into the work done at Garretts Green, we found that children became much more independent and made more choices for themselves in their ICT work. Children began incorporating the software into their daily routine. Staff found children being more creative than they had been with other ICT resources and it was often a focus for speaking opportunities for children reluctant to communicate.
 
Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! also aided observations and assessment of children throughout the setting, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example staff found the software was a great way of engaging family members in children’s education.

Throughout the setting the experience of the staff was an overwhelmingly positive one and the software is used every day as part of the daily routine. When using Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! staff no longer have to tackle the disrupting technical issues they experienced when using other software.

The children of this new year’s intake have taken to Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! quickly and samples of their experiences with the software are already being added to their individual ‘learning journey’ documents. Staff are now planning to collect together image banks for the coming year to import images to the software for their themes and topics throughout the year.

"You've thought of everything!"

Children are naturals when it comes to technology. They’re brilliant at using it. Some of them are better than many adults. I’m sure we’ve all marvelled at how the children we teach know exactly how to exit the software we’ve set up for them, open up Internet Explorer, find the CBeebies website and start blaring out the Bob the Builder theme tune. In my experience it’s either that, Ben 10 or Hannah Montana.

They’re more than happy to show off these skills, usually when they shouldn’t. All this independence is very commendable, of course, but not so good if you need them to practise their matching skills or to identify phonemes. My colleagues and I must have spent hours over the years restarting software and redirecting children to tasks when they’ve ‘accidentally’ closed down the software.

I set out to find a solution to this, and to so many other, obvious problems when teaching using ICT in the Early Years. And so Lugo Learning was born. We needed a way of locking the software so the children couldn’t quit it, by mistake or on purpose! Also we wanted to direct them to a particular activity, so they couldn’t move on to another one that was either too easy for them or far beyond their capabilities. And that’s what we did.

It’s why, whenever we demonstrate Bim! Bam! Boogaloo! in schools, teachers say to us “You’ve thought of everything!” and “It’s obvious it’s been designed by an Early Years teacher”. Teachers quickly see it’s ideal for 0-5s, because that’s exactly who it’s been designed for. Children are our fiercest critics, we always listen to what they have to say and we’re constantly trying to keep up with them!

Please get in touch to let us know what you’re doing with ICT in the Early Years.