Bett and the Future of EdTech
The STEMBricks team attended Bett UK in January for the annual edtech event at Excel London. We collectively clocked up over 90,000 steps walking between talks and chatting with exhibitors over the three days!
One opportunity I’m glad we took advantage of was hearing the keynote speech by Andrew Sliwinski, Head of Product Experience for LEGO® Education. He talked about building AI literacy through creativity and collaboration, alongside two educators from LEO Academy Trust.
LEGO Education recently announced the new Computer Science & AI (CS&AI) sets, so for us the keynote was essential listening! The key takeaway was that AI isn’t a scary mystery, but a hands-on classroom partner. Technology shouldn’t remove the human connection in the classroom: when done right, it enables it!
Unearthing Our Local STEM Champions
A big deal for us this quarter was hosting the FIRST® LEGO® League event at our HQ. Fifteen schools from across East Anglia descended on Getech HQ for a full-on day of challenges, presentations and prizes.
For those who haven’t attended a FLL event before, the day consists of judged presentations followed by a practice run of the robot game before competing in the main event. This season’s theme in ‘Unearthed,’ which is all about archeology.
From creative presentations with innovative solutions to detailed structured coding with gracious professionalism, it was nearly impossible to choose a champion, but there had to be a winner. In fact, there were two!
A huge congratulations to Colchester Royal Grammar School (CRGS) and Broadlands High School for reaching the UK Final in Harrogate. Good luck!
Six Bricks, South Africa, Sondela
In March, our certified Senior LEGO trainer, Zoe (who’s also a qualified Six Bricks Facilitator and Trainer), was invited to attend the Six Bricks 2026 International Conference in South Africa.
If you haven’t heard of Six Bricks before, it’s a super simple way to introduce hands-on creativity, critical thinking and communication using just six LEGO bricks. It was developed by Care for Education in partnership with the LEGO Foundation to promote learning through play.
The event was defined by “Sondela,” a Zulu term meaning “to draw closer, come together, to gather.” Sondela summed it up perfectly, with nearly 100 participants from 26 different countries given the opportunity to sync with facilitators from around the world. The conference started with high-energy opening performances on traditional Bafalons, which we hear certainly set the rhythm for the warm day ahead!
Zoe has brought back a wealth of new ideas for her training sessions. If you’d like to learn more about our Six Bricks Facilitator training, please visit our page at STEMBricks.co.uk for more information.
“A personal highlight was being able to visit the home office of Six Bricks, offering a firsthand look at the heart of the operation. This has given me a toolkit of fresh ideas and refined facilitation skills, ready for the next certification session.” – Zoe, Senior LEGO Trainer
Water Way to Spend a Lesson
Our final success so far in 2026 was our water saving skills workshop in partnership with Affinity Water, where we visited 27 schools to teach them about the impact that water use has on the environment and how Affinity Water plays a huge part. As a result of the outreach programme, 272,526 litres of water have been saved by completing the tasks during the class.
Check out the video they produced when the team visited Chenies Primary School for a workshop, where children got to learn how chalk streams support nature and supply water to local communities.
Wrapping Up
So, it certainly has been an impactful start of the year for Team STEMBricks. If you’re local, come see us at the Suffolk Show in May!
To learn more about the LEGO Learning System and the solutions we offer at Getech, visit STEMBricks.co.uk.
