The USB-powered juggernaut of Bett drew to a close this week. Technology and education has, once again, been at the forefront of the minds of many a teaching and learning team (or whatever they call the folk that get sent to Bett looking for the edtech holy grail). I’ve attended in the past as I always like to have a nose at what’s new and shiny on the edtech scene - but my primary mission has always been to stock up on free pens to hand out to my lot so I don’t have to spend my hard-earned at the pound shop.

With its stadium’s worth of banners, hoardings and logo-stamped, polo-shirted, slightly desperate-looking sales folk, we’re presented, in 4k HD-projected clarity (but an easy to wipe, tactile screen suitable for a range of key stages), with education as a marketplace: a loud and proud commercial enterprise that serves as a somewhat jarring juxtaposition to the everyday austerity that the FE sector is currently in the midst of and which makes up most of my days.

Finding the right edtech
 

Let me put my cards on the table at this point. Like many others who teach in colleges, it’s not my only source of income (to be honest, I’d be a bit knackered if it was, the pay being what it is and all). When not trying to shove similes down my students’ throats, I also act as a consultant to businesses (many of them of the edtech variety) on the products and services they offer to colleges and other institutions, trying to make them more relevant, useful and appealing. Yeah, I know -  but it puts food on the table (and the soul removal op wasn’t that bad).

So I have a foot firmly in each camp. Both inside the classroom and outside in the market. And, with this insight, I’d like to offer a little bit of advice to FE staff who may have been blinded by the lights of Bett and are looking to spend their meagre budget on some tech that will help their students:

There are a huge range of undoubtedly useful tech tools out there. But at the end of the day, that doesn’t really matter. What matters are the people behind the technology. Education is a market and there are some in the edtech business who see it as only that; something to be exploited and drained with little care or insight, who are fully focused on product transaction above all.

Thoughtful and values-driven

But there are also those companies (often smaller ones with members who are linked to teaching, or those that go out of their way to seek the expertise of people who will be using the technology) that are more thoughtful and values-driven. Instead of patter, they’re honest and explicitly state limitations instead of the incessant talking up. They offer exhaustive customer support because they understand the ramifications and hassle if it all goes kaput in a college classroom. They care about what they’re doing because they actually care about education.

Seek those guys out. It’s difficult (especially in the gladiatorial arena of somewhere like Bett) but a shared aim of helping learners and staff is perhaps a little bit more sustainable than a holographic register or the like.

Tom Starkey teaches English at a college in the North of England