You Need
January is supposed to be named after the god Janus, who has two heads so he can look backwards and forwards. BETT helps people in the world of education do the same thing.
The BETT awards announced at the Grosvenor Hotel and the Becta ICT In Practice awards show us the best of last year. The Special Needs Fringe, sponsored by Inclusive Technology and Special Children magazine, provides us with a chance to make new year resolutions and plan what we are going to do in 2005 to make our classrooms more exciting and inclusive.
We all need good pictorial resources and Sherston's new flashcards covering nouns, verbs and adjectives will suit a range of users from children who have recently arrived in Britain and who need support to build a core vocabulary through to pupils with speech and language delay. The high quality photographs can be projected onto an interactive whiteboard for an eye-catching display but there are also teacher controlled activities such as matching and finding a word.
I have fallen in love with another of their products, Map Detectives Rural. This features a robbery at Spangley Manor, where an ageing rock star has lost some of his most treasured items. In the best Cluedo tradition there is a motley crew of suspects and your job is to use maps and navigation skills to track them down and find out whodunit.
There were a number of newcomers to the Fringe. Immersive Media Spaces produce Midi Creator and sensory room environments. They are delighted with the Fringe audiences: "People who come to the stand are really switched on," said Mark Hildred. "They know about sensory environments and what they can do. They are looking for ideas and resources which are interactive and stop children from being passive." IMS were showing their portable midi kit, which has been extensively used by music therapists. They were also showing some of their key public projects such as the soft play area they have installed at the National Railway Museum at York which provides a host of sounds and activities for children to experience before they set out to meet Thomas the Tank Engine and his mates.
Claro is a welcome addition to the world of assistive technology as it aims to produce software for people who cannot read text easily. ClaroRead, the latest product, will read text out loud with more intonation than the average talking word processor. It will also save it as an audio file. It lets you change the appearance of text, not just the font and colour, but also the spacing between characters and lines. It also has a predictive facility. Really, with software that reads your mind and talks back to you - who could ask for more? All this for £159.
Old favourites Mayer-Johnson were back this year with CDs for some of their most popular books, such as This is the one I want. They have some new packs which feature Speaking Dynamically Pro and BoardMaker activities. These include ABCs and Cooking up Fun, which covers taste testing exercises, setting the table and behaving appropriately and making simple delights such as bagels with cream cheese. These ready-made resources are a great way to show teachers some of the power of Boardmaker. With 3000 symbols at your fingertips, you can make professional looking displays in minutes.
It's often difficult to find suitable resources and services for older learners but there are hopeful signs than things are changing. It's as if the world has woken up to the idea that kids with special needs grow up and expect to have a range of software and access devices to meet their ever changing needs. HFT (the Home Farm Trust) are making real headway in pioneering new approaches to working with adults with learning disabilities. They are in the forefront of person centred planning and providing innovative frameworks in PowerPoint for life story work. The results are sensational.
Traxsys, formerly Penny and Giles, have a great mouse alternative. It is aimed at all those users who have poor fine motor skills for whatever reason. It is grey, looks like a standard office device and will allow you to change the speed of the mouse without going into computer settings. This product is aimed at adults who do not want something which looks like a special needs device. It will prove very popular in FE colleges, libraries and UK online centres and with the burgeoning numbers of 'silver surfers'.
So often people don't know what provision is available. Health authorities, social services, colleges and commercial organisations may all have a part to play, but how do we let people know what we are doing? One great new website is set to change this. 
Checkthemap.org lets organisations, big and small, put up their details and advertise their events free of charge. In four weeks there have been over 1000 entries, so it's definitely meeting a need.
Congratulations to Inclusive and AMDi for winning one of the coveted BETT awards for the Tech/Talk plus Environmental Control Unit. The video, filmed at Heronsbridge school and shown at the awards ceremony, was excellent in showing what a real difference a piece of technology can make. Unfortunately Choose and Tell: Nursery Rhymes didn't win the Early Years and Primary Software, Content and Tools category. Nevertheless, judges and reviewers have raved about Nick Wonham's work with Inclusive Technology and are looking forward to the forthcoming Choose And Tell: Legends.
Finally, in the midst of all this good news, there was one sad moment. Trish Hornsey, Managing Director of Inclusive Technology, is on the move. Officially we are told that she is retiring at the end of January but anyone who knows Trish will find this most unlikely. She will still be involved with some of the projects and undoubtedly will be spending more time having fun and enjoying herself. It marks the end of an era for Inclusive as she has been so instrumental in making things happen and bringing new products to the market place. She will be missed.
By Sal McKeown of Becta, Special Children Magazine and the TES.