Coming home to EdTech

Tavi Hirst
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

I recently started a new job working with a company that creates software for teachers. Show My Homework (soon to be Satchel) is used by 30% of secondary schools in the UK, with thousands of teachers, students and parents using the app daily to help them manage homework.

I’m happy to be back home in EdTech after a two year interlude. I started my career with a focus on tech for teaching and learning, working with the likes of Pearson and Kahoot!, but I’ve spent the last two years in more general product roles. Whilst these roles have helped me to develop skills and work with some great PMs, EdTech finally drew me back. Now, I can bring the product skills learned elsewhere to this market with its special mix of challenges and opportunities.

Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

So, why EdTech?

The first reason is simple, I love to teach and I love to learn. My favourite early jobs were in education; tutoring local kids GCSE physics, working as an assistant in my local art school or at a Nursery. In another life I might have been a teacher, but a career in technology won out against the reports of stress and burnout from the teaching profession. This is an industry with some deep problems.

My second reason is that education matters. Almost all children receive an education, and what we teach them will affect their mindset and life choices. With education, we influence the ability of children to grow, develop and thrive in our world. The work of teachers is the forefront, but there are a host of other ways to positively influence the mechanisms of mass education.

Finally, education is an industry that is struggling to keep up. As other industries are disrupted all around us, the Information Age is taking time to change the way that we teach and learn. This is a strange disconnect; the internet, a source of so much knowledge, hasn’t yet managed to change the way we transfer knowledge to our children. And the upshot of this is a profession in chaos, with students less engaged than ever and teachers more unhappy. These are big challenges, but interesting ones too.

These three reasons, the personal, the political and the innovative, are what drives me to education. I look forward to working with my new colleagues to make whatever small difference we can.