Podcast | Season 1 | Episode 10: How Can We Empower More Women to Be EdTech Leaders

What obstacles do women face in the EdTech sector and what can be done to make sure that more women are promoted into leadership roles in the education sector?

Listen to this week's episode where Debbie Clinton, member of the GovNet Education Advisory Board, leads this panel of successful women, discussing their experience:

• Ensure every school leader is a leader of EdTech and innovation
• Highlight the importance of mentoring and networks such as WomenED
• Diversity guidance – what is there available?
• What is the risk of not promoting women leaders?

Chair:
Debbie Clinton, CEO, Academy Transformation Trust

Speakers:
Kirsty Grundy, Principal, Shireland Technology Primary & Primary Director, Shireland Collegiate Academy Trust

Jules Daulby, National Leader of #WomenEd, Education Consultant and Writer, Women Edtech

Bukky Yusuf, Science Lead, Edith Kay School

This panel was recorded live on 13th November 2019 in the Tech Theatre of the Schools & Academies Show at the NEC in Birmingham.

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Transcript

Debbie Clinton
00:28

I'm Debbie Clinton. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the Academy Transformation Trust. Also, interestingly, a member of the advisory board that runs this gig. So just declaring that particular interest. However, I'm not important because I have this wonderful assembly of ladies with me today and more about them in a moment as they introduced themselves, and terribly important this this set of agenda they set this complex agenda in preparing for this I was reading the four bullet is revisiting the four bullets at the heart of this session. And thinking how fascinating it is that not only do we still feel the need, I think for good reason to link women and leadership, but also, most significantly of all, to link women and education technology. I am in awe of the achievements of the people on my left in that particular regard. And we'll hear much more about that during the session. But there can be few things more important, I guess, at the moment in the climate in which we unfortunately have to live, where we embrace the beauty of gender, and the beauty of educational technology and the profound impact it can have for our society. And just one anecdote please forgive me, but I think it's pertinent. One of the former lives I had was as one of her majesty's inspectors for Ofsted. Sorry, guys, I was part of the dark side once. And I was an inspector of special education. Before that, I was also the Chair of Governors at a special school and a pupil referral unit. And I saw even in those situations quite a few years ago, the huge impact that effective skilled use of tech could have upon our most vulnerable children. And it was inspiring, and more of that as we go on. So I'm not important these guys are, please introduce yourselves and give us a bit of your spiel.

Kirsty Grundy
02:46

I think that's me. So I'm Kirsty Grundy, I must remember my new married name, because I often refer back to my my previous name. Yeah, so I work in, in a trust a small trust in the just southwest of Birmingham. Actually, as I said in my previous session this morning, the independent republic of Sandwell, which is not too far for indeed far from here in Smethwick which is a very culturally rich, great place to be. And I've spent 18 years of my 25 years in education in Smethwick in one form or the other. So I'm currently principal of Shireland Technology Primary School. It's one of the first technology primary schools in the countrt, it is a free school. And it is, its aspiration is to join with Shireland Collegiate Academy, which has been a school for over 100 years in Smethwick of which I've worked. So you talk about the dark side. I started my career in primary hmm in somewhere in the 1990s. And it's not the latter part. And in primary and then cross to the dark side as I call it a secondary and did 12 years sorry, Bukky, 12 years in secondary and I say are now crossing back to the light. Yeah, so we opened our technology primary school this September to a cohort of 90 pupils, recepiton and year one is the first of 4 technology primary schools that we are opening in the West Midlands Area. So if anybody's interested, please come and talk to me later. But I think I, I've often said this. I am as far away from being a geek as possible. And I think if you'd said to me, when I started off my career all those years ago that I would end up a in a secondary school and be re-leading the edtech strategy there for over 10 years. I'd have laughed crying And then run off in the opposite direction I really would have done. But I was lucky to be in part of the national ICT testbed with when Estelle Morris was Secretary of State many years ago, and was at the primary school then when we had a huge amount of money, which I can only say I'm very envious I wish we had now to really invest in technology and see what it could do. And it was then that I saw that technology, if used well, could engage. It could enhance learning, it could extend learning. And for me as a leader now, moving out of the classroom, I've seen how it can reduce workload streamline processes make things more effective. So my passion is about how technology can not just affect classroom use, but also as a leader I think one of the things that is my sort of bag when it comes to technology leadership is encouraging more leaders. And that includes women and men, when they get into leadership to recognise the value that technology can have in the role of leadership, and how it can really help and support us the strategic use of technology.

Debbie Clinton
06:25

Thank you Kirstie. Jules.

Jules Daulby
06:27

Hello, thank you. My name is Jules Daulby. And I am one of the co founders of WomenED, which is a grassroots organisation to support existing and inspiring women leaders. And on the offshot to that there we've also now got WomenEdTech, because that's probably one of the most dire places where women are represented, and particularly, and these figures always shocks me that 8 out of 10 women are teachers. And yet, even recently, the DfE is advisory group for tech had more men called Chris than it did women on the board. So, I've got into WomenEd and WomenEdTech in this way. The reason tech interests me though is because I'm also a teacher of special needs. And I teach a lot of children with dyslexia, a lot of children with other special needs. And I've seen the magic that technology can do similarly to what Kirsty said really, and it's interesting seeing TextHelp to my right here, because they were the one of the first people that I that I met to see what tech can do for children with dyslexia. So you can now go into an English exam if you can't decode which is work out the words on the page and what they say you can go into an English language exam in the reading paper and you can use technology like TextHelp helping, there are other there are other brands available. And it will read it to them like SatNav and so they can still do the comprehension in that paper, and what saddens me and I've written about this for the Chartered College of Teaching and their impact magazine, when they had check was that we are not using tech enough yet. So we have got so many children that tech will liberates, and yet they're not given access to text. So they're sitting in classes are unable to read, unable to access the curriculum, unable to record their knowledge when there is all this technology available. And a lot of it now this is a paid for I know technical, but there's a lot of free stuff out there now. Or if you've got Office 365 as a school, there's immersive reading now with Microsoft, Google have their own version as do Apple. The technology on my phone, I can send a text and have it read to me if I can't read, you know, so we have all this stuff. Office Lens is another one where you can just take a picture and it will then read it to you. And it frustrates me greatly that these children aren't getting what they really require to liberate them. And literacy is freedom. That's UNESCO's sense of that. And actually, we are not freeing up these children, we are allowing them to fail in the classroom because there's no tech. So that's my background early. And that's where I come from. So I'm very passionate about women in tech. And I'm very passionate about using tech for the most vulnerable children, and who's who are often failing in our schools.

Debbie Clinton
09:21

Finally, to my left, last, but very much, not least.

Bukky Yusuf
09:24

My name is Bukky Yusuf, I'm a secondary science teacher, senior leader and consultant wellness coach. And I have been involved with WomenEd as a network leader for about maybe three, four years. Yeah, from the very beginning. I'd also admit to the fact that I am a geek, I was one of the ones that actually loved arcade games. And you may have seen me like in Sheffield at the National Video Museum, playing the game to my heart's content. That was where my interest in edtech actually came about. And in one of the schools I worked in my head teacher realised that but what I quickly realise this the fact that having an interest in edtech and gaming, and leading on it are two totally different things. My role about five, six years ago was to roll out the whole school use of mobile devices. At the time, it was iPads, we moved to Chromebooks. And we had what we call a blended approach where, depending on the subject that has been learned and taught, it would influence the device. So iPad in creative subjects where students could record what they were doing, and get immediate feedback. And where you had written subjects we use Chromebooks. It took a long time to get staff as well as students on board with that. And some of the mistakes I made was thinking, Okay, well, if you've got a young student teenagers, of course, they'll have the digital skills, of course there will be digital natives, and they weren't. And in fact, some of them were asking me why do we need this? We've got textbooks. I just thought, What's going on here, but you've also got the fear factor of staff who've seen different tech initiatives come and go. Most of them don't work. So we had an interesting scenario where we had these iPads, we had Chromebooks, but the WiFi wasn't working. Yeah, because we had black spots. I had never realised such things came about. It also led to my own interest in leadership. As I mentioned, I'm part of WomenEd. And through my coaching skills, I actually like to help others develop their leadership skills. But when it came to say, like edtech leadership, particularly women, I noticed that there weren't that many. And if you caught another dimension in terms of the BAME aspects, there are fewer skills still. So I'm very interested in exploring what we can actually do in a meaningful way to move that forward.

Debbie Clinton
11:38

Thank you. So I think the august credentials of the panels speak for themselves. And I'd like to begin with a couple of questions to warm us up, and then open up the questions to the floor if that's all right, with everybody assembled here. It struck me in listening to those eloquent expositions about the provenance of this session, there are two really clear emerging things coming out of that conversation. The first one for me is the matter of inclusion, therefore, of social mobility, and therefore of achievement for all with regard to young people, children and young people. So I wonder if we can start with the first question, which is that. What is the experience of the panel with regard to the impact of technology, particularly upon the broad area of diversity and inclusion? And without selling a product and what you've seen that can have the most profound impact on young people's progress and, and intellectual confidence?

Kirsty Grundy
12:48

Well, I think one of the great things about technology is technology doesn't judge. It doesn't see color. It doesn't see race. It doesn't see gender and when in about 10 years ago, we rolled out about 2000 PCs about, I think it was over 10 years ago 2000 PCs in into the local area. So to families, to libraries to places of worship, the Gurdwara and the Mosque and the Churches, really to look at how we could extend learning opportunities. One of the things that I think that was a benefit that we hadn't perhaps perceived before we did that was how we open doors to many parts of the community and families that were perhaps reluctant to come into school. So many of the Muslim women within our families who previously would walk their children to school and would drop them and walk back again. And it was really hard to engage in that get them to come in because of their own lack of confidence. Perhaps it was a spoken language, perhaps it was that they didn't have any formal education from the countries that they came from. There was a lot trying to break down those barriers were really hard. And one of the things that we did, and going back that it has, I think, has singularly had the most impact. It's a piece of technology that had the most impact for us, and that we still use is it was the online platform where parents could engage. And what we found was that that particular cohort, were able to have conversations with teachers about their children's learning that we simply weren't able to do before. And that was when that was a really powerful observation that came where we thought, actually do you know what this is, this is something where we really need to push woods, moving on now 10-12 years and and opening the doors of our primary school and having a platform, something like we've used ClassDojo. We extensively use a reward platform, it's free. And it was very much looking at that for in terms of positive rewards and engaging families on that. But the success hasn't been just been about the behavior. But also it's been the parents are recording their children at home. We've had 87 out of the 87 families signing off. All of them are posting even if it's just a like to see that they've noted hours. I've always said that technology has been able to give a window to families into the school that perhaps they haven't had before. What I never thought of this about just at the beginning in September when we rolled out ClassDojo to families was it would give us as teachers and as leaders, windows into the homes of our children, because what we're seeing is that families are actually taking pictures of the children, and many of them are the mums in the family and sharing the work that they're doing with their children, and what their children are producing at home. And it's opening up that dialogue.

Debbie Clinton
16:23

That's really helpful if I could just with your permission, just interject briefly. The primary schools in my trust are also were prolific user of dojo we have had, we've seen a similarly profound impact with hardly any input.

Kirsty Grundy
16:38

I think most people in technology, you have to really work at embedding. Yeah, there are very few pieces of technology, I think that you can put in place and they just go and it has it has been literally foot to the floor. And it's just yeah, it's just been impressive.

Debbie Clinton
16:53

Right, Thank you, Jules.

Jules Daulby
16:54

Thank you. Um, so you've talked a lot about universal strategies. For me. It's a I'm going to talk about those sort of individual strategies. And there's been a court case that came out yesterday, which was fabulous news was a man that had taken the NHS I think it was to court. Because of, he'd been, he'd got a disability due to birth. And but he defended himself, even though he couldn't speak using Eye Gaze. And Eye Gaze is the technology where you use your eyes to do reading and speaking. And it is an amazing piece of technology. And so this man was able rather than depending on anybody else, he was able to go to court and give his own witness statements using Eye Gaze. Now, for me, that's one of the most inclusive and liberating things that technology can do. Another example is there's something now and I think there's similar brands around here today of AD1 one wherever your child for instance, has got cancer, and they've had to take a lot of time out of school, this computer will sit at their table for them next to their friends, their friends can even pick up the robot and take it to the playground with them. And the child can be lying in bed and still experience school. So that's a fantastic piece of technology for inclusion. And the third one, I always come back to this because this is the reason I do what I do with assistive technology is I don't know how old Craig is now, but we're still in contact. I think he's traveling around Thailand. But he was severely dyslexic, and was a school refusal. He used to run away from school the whole time. And I met him by the time he got to FE college and he still could not read and write. But by then he had 10 years with his mum really helping him to use Dragon which is not a which is a speech to text. So he was really good on Dragon and he was an identical twin. His brother also used Dragon it also severely dyslexic, and he was doing an FE course, and and the lecturers actually wouldn't believe that is the work he did at home was the same as his writing, because his writing looks so poor in the classroom because he wouldn't use Dragon. He didn't want to do it in front of other people. But his actual essays that he was coming in from home, they just didn't believe it was the same person. I'm really pleased to say that Craig still can't write. But he's now doing a PhD. So he's doing a PhD using Dragon. So there's just three really amazing examples about how liberating technology can be for people with special needs. It raises their aspirations, it raises expectations, and they can really be liberated and succeed.

Debbie Clinton
19:37

Getting some amazing top tips here, aren't we?

Bukky Yusuf
19:40

Okay, I'll just share two points. I think the greatest impact is actually start using the tech in a meaningful way. And actually talking about the impact is actually having a second aspect of staff then talking about software that could actually help with specific learning needs. So in my school, I'm in a special school. A lot of the students have been school refused. And some of them lack the confidence to actually write things down with something as simple as take Google Docs, but you've got the voice dictation software, which is free, they can actually commit their ideas on to the page. And the sense of wonder and the fact that you know, they can actually do this is absolutely incredible. But unless teachers can understand the learning needs that the students are actually facing, and then think about what would help them best, you have a bit of a hit and miss. So that's what I'd end with. Thank you.

Debbie Clinton
20:30

And I'd like to end this conversation with a further commentary from a very good friend of mine who is also a former colleague, and I haven't tested this myself, but I am fascinated by what I'm picking up. And this is a comment with regard to the use of technology to secure better staff well being. So iGather is a function on our iPhones that enables us to dictate into them, which then converts it into text and enables you therefore to mark work without writing anything. And she said, as an example, a set of books that would have taken her anything up to two hours, took her 25 minutes. And she simply printed off the text gave it to the children. So I haven't seen that I'm gonna go and find out more because think is brilliant in terms of well being, but really important function now, because we've spoken very well, at some length. Can we go straight now to questions from the audience, please? That'd be really, really good. And ideally, I'd like two or three to get going with the gentleman over here, please. Thank you. Good afternoon, sir.

Audience Member 1
21:46

Hello. Yeah, interesting, because I come from a group of schools where all four of our schools including a boys school, the edtech leaders are all women. So that's interesting. And how we empower them because we're already doing. And in fact, when I used to run a local authority, the person who took over when I left was a woman and did a better job than me. But is it not the tech bit that is causing the problem and maybe we should redefine it as digitally empowered education, as opposed to tech, because when you go around Bett you see loads of people my age with lots of beards. And that and, and that's because we were into tech, but actually, empowering young people through digital tools, technologies and resources is is probably more important than the technology that's under it. Thank you.

Debbie Clinton
22:41

Thank you. That's useful. Thank you very much did so just just to recap, it's about language, and about, I guess, identification around technology. Is there a need to rebrand it or rename it and for it to lose sometimes negative connotations. Let's start at the end, Bucky, please.

Bukky Yusuf
23:07

And I agree with you about rebranding it in terms of digital skills. I think my only concern is is the fact that the language aspects, it's almost like genderised, then in that case, it has to do with men, it's tech, perhaps it has to do with women, maybe not so and i think that that leads to what some of the biases as to what you know, in terms of skills, and, you know, application of those skills, what do women bring to the arena, and how it differs for men, so I'm with you, but I just think they need to be careful, I'm picking as to any inherent biases that that particular language may actually lead to.

Debbie Clinton
23:46

Thank you.

Jules Daulby
23:47

I was gonna ask you for the microphone. I already really got one. Yeah, is a really good point. And what I'm really pleased to hear about is that there are women edtech leaders out there, because one of the things I wrote down I wasn't looking at my phone when you were talking about But I thought, oh, I've got to say this. Because actually, for me, one of the, the ways we can get more women into tech is the entry level. So because if you can't see women in tech, then those girls can't believe they could be in tech. So for a long time, you know, the Silicon Valley, I kind of call it the young boys club, as opposed to the old men's club. And it was, you know, predominantly male. And, you know, look around here often the tech companies are predominately male. So women are not seeing or young girls are not seeing women in tech. So that pipeline for me is really important because we can't get our women leaders and our influences the pipeline's not there. So two things that I would recommend for those women leaders so that I think these are evidence based around how you support women when they feel slightly alone, or it seems like a more male environment, and that's one mentoring. So if they've got a mentor so they can talk about issues around being a woman in tech, I think is really useful, and also networking, other women in tech. So those three leaders, I think it's really important that they can get together and they can have a forum where they can network. It's what WomenEd do you know, it's connecting, aspiring and existing women leaders and that network. We know in WomenEd, it has been hugely powerful in increasing women in leadership positions.

Debbie Clinton
25:22

And I would add further to that last statement, and as a bit of a sad Twitter geek myself, which I'm quite proud of, actually. And I have seen the way that social media has empowered those in leadership to connect widely and deeply and particularly women who are notoriously bad at blowing their trumpets. And it just is historically and Twitter has really, really empowered that I think, and facilitated that. Kirsty.

Kirsty Grundy
25:55

Well, I think it's some picking what you said. I think part of it is absolutely. The technology because, you know, I go and have conversations with people. Sometimes I feel I have to apologise or I have had to apologise. What do you know, you start talking to people to say, you're into edtech and you see people just glaze over. You know, and you just II think you unpick that and that the stereotypes that go back, you look at the christmas adverts that are on telly at the moment, and you look at the ones around technology, and the boys that are playing there, and we're still having to challenge those, those stereotypes. And then you move forward. Let's move forward to because one of my bugbears is initial teacher training. And again, it's not just in terms of the gender issue actually, but again, wider about you harnessing technology within the education sector. And, you know, it feels like we're ever fighting this vicious spiral that people come in to the profession and are properly taught about how technology can enable how it can engage and all of the things that we know it can do it, how it can empower, how it can reduce workload. And people go on through the career, they go to the middle leadership, they go on to the next. And then suddenly, you know, they get to headship and and you stop trying to engage with them about having conversations about what can technology do in your role, how can it help you with your staff retention, you know, by reducing workload, how can it really engage and you can see this glaze over so there's something to be said about how his boys are initial teacher training, failing miserably in this area, and really looking at that, but it is it's a it's a big question. And I think I think the vocabulary, the gender stereotypes are still out there. Part of it is though we are moving forwards, I mean, what I did see I Bett this year was I definitely saw there were more, I think more women to where when I started when started going 15 years ago, and I, you know, people almost did a double take as you walk down as a woman. And Bett, you know that that is that is changing and things are moving on. Are they moving on and keeping, quickly moving on as much as it really should? Probably not. But I think it's great that you've got all of your leaders, you know, in your. Well done.

Bukky Yusuf
28:26

Can I see unconventional and do something I said, give a question back to you. What is the successor is interesting to hear about the fact your edtech leaders are allwomen, what plans are in place to ensure but that continues? You obviously won't be able to answer it now. But I think in terms of securing that, and enabling that to continue because it's such an unusual model. It'd be interesting to hear what plans will be in place for that.

Audience Member 1
28:47

Yeah, I think the reason that they're all women is because we focus on the ed, rather than the tech. So we focus on the pedagogy and taking, how we can support improve learning outcomes, rather than, hey, we're going to have a bit of technology. So we throw the technology aside and look at how you're going to support learners and, that's how we take them forward. And that's just how they will come into their job and how the person who took over for me when I left the local authority, how she moved on, because she was a top person in terms of pedagogy, and that's what we want.

Debbie Clinton
29:31

There has actually been a common thread, which has actually not been about the technology. But it's been about the impact that the technology has with regard to children making progress or

Kirsty Grundy
29:43

Which is as it should be.

Debbie Clinton
29:44

Absolutely. So we're not having a tail wagging dog conversation here. It was really, really helpful. Any further questions from the audience. The lady in a second front row, just here.

Audience Member 2
29:56

Thank you. Hello. So one of the things I struggle with in the whole discourse around edtech, and technology and the workload issue is that you've got this technology that can empower women actually to do work in a way that's a bit more unconventional, particularly around after maternity, when you've got small children were actually technology. If you can leave your work at halftime and go and pick your own children up and then do work later. That's great. But then you've got people saying all this stuff from top down that, you know, no one should email after five o'clock and therefore, but actually, that can restrict that ability. And yes, there are things in place, but I think it's a really difficult potential vicious circle around stereotypes. And I'd be interested to find out what you think about how we can get that right. Because I think if we say, Oh, actually, this tech is really good for women and empowering women to use technology in a way that fits their lifestyle. We might accidentally reinforce the stereotype. It's the women that are doing the caring, and therefore we can end up in this constant circle of life. Okay, well, we'll restrict technology to this time because of workload, but then we might actually be restricting someone else's life. And where do you sit on that away? Have you seen examples of that?

Debbie Clinton
31:10

It's a really good question, isn't it and, and very, very briefly as we as we start speaking as obviously the most senior leader in my organisation, and I was one of those, you know, market leaders that thought it'd be a really good idea to impose a ban of email, no emails after five and no weekend emailing and so on. And I had a whole army of people saying to me, please don't do that. Because actually, my bath time with my children, male and female is x two x and I need to work after that. So I don't want to so actually you are spot on. So our approach to our well being and our trustees is much more nuanced than that and about the individual's right to set their working parameters themselves Anyway, enough for me. This end, Kirsty.

Kirsty Grundy
31:58

I think you're absolutely right. There is terms of really looking at. Sometimes we have knee jerk reactions to things that way. And we have to think about that, and consider the unintended consequences of our actions and sometimes really thinking about so as you say, you do x because of this, and then you end up having a whole sorts of things. And I think you're right, sometimes by imposing too many things, you can't and it is about just stepping back and perhaps being a little bit more pragmatic in where things are, and leave people that choice. It's not and not impose your expectations of certain things, but just kind of having that that relaxing sort of back. Yeah. Whether that's for male or female in terms of workload. Hmm,

Jules Daulby
32:47

I think it's a great question. And I think about those perverse incentives and perverse things that happen. And funnily enough, it reminds me of school uniform, where somebody wants a gender neutral, uniform skirt. Okay, let's ban trousers and everyone can wear skirts. You know. So that's kind of a craziness that happens, doesn't it around gender, and, and being an inclusion champion I and and into diversity. Everybody's different you know and coming from a neuro. I'm a neuro diverse person I have ADHD, I'm different. So actually my working pattern changes every day, depending on what I'm thinking about, you know, I'm all over the place. So none of those rules will fit me. And so, for me, it has to be looking at the pert like we do our students looking at that personal way. So we don't expect you to work too hard. Okay, that's the expectation. How you do that is irrelevant. Yeah. So I don't want to say after five o'clock, because that isn't going to help those that want to bother children at 4:30. And what I have found and I did get this idea from somebody else under my emails, now I put my work. It's very flexible. So I I do my emails in all sorts of very strange times, please don't feel that you need to respond until you are ready to work. And I wonder if something like that just just those sorts of little points are really good for people because we are all different. And we all work differently. And so, you know, like the perversity would be if you banned emails after five o'clock you're actually disabling somebody and their work.

Kirsty Grundy
34:26

That with the whole email thing isn't is an issue. And I think one of the things I found over the past six months since becoming having principal and keeping a watching brief over the other primaries is I can't answer all the emails yet a time. Yeah. And I'm from so for someone who prided themselves really getting back to people straight away. When I actually look at what's in there and trying to sift the most important thing and somebody who did some coaching with me actually said, when you're going through a really really busy time and period of your life sometimes, put your active assistant on and just say, look, it's really busy at the moment. I'm sorry. If it's really urgent, phone me. Yes. Oh my god, it's amazing how much just just went that I didn't need to get back to and those that really did you know what needs something, they gave me a phone call, but not that many actually did and then I picked it back up again at the end of it. So you know, emails are a blessing and a curse, but they're also the tools within the email to help us as well deal with that and manage it.

Debbie Clinton
35:31

Very, very good tip. And actually what we're talking about with communication strategies and being really clear. So my trust at the moment is busy writing a policy to help everyone around what we use different comms for because actually, I would argue people use email really and appropriately quite a lot of the time and don't necessarily a phone call. CCing the whole world into a color of paint decision or something like that. Anyway, I'm digressing. Bukky.

Bukky Yusuf
36:07

I love the questions because it's very interesting question. I think you'll be down to school leaders to understand where the workload pressure points are for staff, and explore take the time to research and explore which technology will actually help, but then valuing and trusting staff to do what is best for them. As simple as that.

Debbie Clinton
36:25

Thank you. So we've, we've got two minutes left. So are we going to be able to have one more question? As long as we're really quick in our response? Otherwise, I'll I'll wrap up any further questions? Oh, good. Good. One question. We will add like 30 seconds each.

Audience Member 3
36:44

Just a quick question. Are there any journals or like sources that you would recommend for us to read to find out more about EdTech.

Debbie Clinton
36:57

Thank you really good questions, any particular sort of sources?

Bukky Yusuf
37:00

Yes, there's a book. I just ordered it today actually, it's called the 'Missing Voices in EdTech' by, I think Rafranz Davis. And it's talking about not just in terms of just gender, but also BAME. And she talks about how it's important to be role models for our students, and having the diversity and actually looking at how about command influence the technological world?

Debbie Clinton
37:23

I wonder if you will be able to tweet that.

Bukky Yusuf
37:25

Yes.

Debbie Clinton
37:26

It will be helpful, wouldn't it? Would that help people? Yeah, brilliant.

Jules Daulby
37:30

I would say follow WomenEd and WomenEdTech and, there's lots on there. And we also link to other things. And the other thing, which is my little hashtag, there is a sort of unofficial logo of WomenEd, which is #genderedcheese, and it looks at gender stereotyping, so really silly, silly things that happened. Hence, you know, these types of sweatshirts, so but if you're actually if you look at gender cheese, you get an awful lot of information about that stuff. And the final one that I've just discovered is Jess Smith who runs Embolden Her and I I wanted to finish with this because I love this phrase, she runs a coding company. And she said, the diversity we create is as strong as the code we write. And so and that, for me is a really important message for tech.

Debbie Clinton
38:13

And the closing comment from Kirsty.

Kirsty Grundy
38:15

Yeah, everything everything that Jules says, but I think most importantly, we want to we want to hear the story about girly swot.

Jules Daulby
38:23

Okay, so very quickly if you don't know this story, this isn't my idea. But this was Boris Johnson actually criticised David Cameron for getting high grades in exams in his university by calling him a girly swot. So Steph, I forgot her name. McGovern, Steph McGovern was she's a journalist with the BBC and she was on her I got news for you about three weeks ago, and she's created this jumper to embrace the girly swot because it should not be a criticism. But actually if you buy these jumpers now, the money goes to charity so you can buy them online, which I did, and the money goes to charity. To a wonderful charity called Raise, which is to inspire girls in to give them support and encouragement. So it's a really good charitable cause and also another gender cheese thing.

Debbie Clinton
39:12

I'd like to thank our panel very much indeed for their contributions today. And thank you, the audience for tolerating us. Well done ladies, that you very much.

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39:21

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