Epic Fail | Women in EdTech ISTE18 Panel

How has an E-P-I-C failure turned into a growth mindset?

One of the sessions I was most excited for at this year’s conference was Epic Failures. The all-female leaders on the panel included Kelly Sain, Rusul Alrubail, Sarah Thomas, PhD, Heather Lister, Kim Leclaire, and Diane Doersch.

The session was very interactive, including creating space for folks to virtually participate from afar in real time and encouraging ongoing conversation with a Voxer group. They also shared their slides here.

How has an E-P-I-C failure turned into a growth mindset?

The audience participation rolled into the panelists introducing themselves not by spouting their bios but by getting vulnerable in front of hundreds of peers and describing an epic failure of their own. They then turned it over to the attendees to learn about failures from our neighbors. Meanwhile, the panelists worked the room as listeners.

When they brought us back together, they offered their own takeaways from what they heard. The one that most resonated with me was Heather’s: “We’re making these decisions for learners. And we’re not seeking their input.”

“Women in tech aren’t allowed to fail.” — Kelly Sain

Kelly then brought some ‘A’ game real talk: “At the executive level, women in tech don’t have to worry about the bathroom line because we might be the only female in the room.”

Rusul added that there aren’t enough safe spaces for failure for women and that this can breed unhealthy competition when support and mentorship are what are really needed.

Sarah’s story about her failure was around her sense of impostor syndrome when she first started teaching. To hear an ISTE award winner, community organizer, publisher, PhD holding and Twitter-famous educator talk about how she failed by trying to be someone she wasn’t surprised me. Sarah learned to be herself, to be a humble lifelong learner who commits to grow and ask others — including her students! — for help.

I think the touching and powerful piece of this is that Sarah used her massive soap box to give the rest of us permission to embrace our shortcomings so that we can create room to learn from them.

The SUPER MEGA MUY GIGANTE takeaway

It was no accident that the panel was all women. The focus on failure was very specifically through the lens of the women who work, lead and serve in this space. When the panelists asked the audience if their experiences were shared experiences, the majority-female room was full of raised hands.

Women in EdTech find themselves ignored. They find their ideas going unappreciated and under-valued. And they often find their own ideas, when restated a few minutes later by men, are received with enthusiasm and fanfare.

This session was intended to be the start of a sustained conversation, campaign and movement. Part of the momentum building includes 3 Twitter slow chats.

Slow Twitter Chats:

• August 9th: What do you want to try to kick off the school year for success?
• October 23rd: Share progress towards goals. Raise your issues, seek and offer help and mentorship
• Encouragement! Keep going or share our successes.

For many women in the room, the session was affirmation that they aren’t alone in their experiences. For us men, it was a stark wakeup call to be aware of the problem and to do something about it. Hopefully, together and with these amazing ladies’ leadership, we are on our way to change the world!

I tried to live stream the session on Periscope. The recording isn’t quite an epic fail but it’s far from high quality so sorry about that. Hopefully, it can still be of some use to folks who couldn’t be in the room with us:

Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, please click to clap and recommend it to others!

As always, your own thoughts, ideas and pushback response posts are appreciated and valued. Helping me to better understand and process this and be an advocate and ally for women in EdTech is especially appreciated!

In addition to following Noah Geisel here on Medium, you can find him at SenorG on Twitter.