No Tech Without Edtech Summit 2025!
A live scribing extravaganza
This October, I was lucky enough to be booked in to live illustrate an event with Strathclyde University! Their event was exploring the various ways that tech could be used in education, as well as in the medical field. Some highlights of Lara Lewington’s talk about medical AI included her story about walking around a big 3D printed brain (sounds like a good time) to try to locate and isolate factors that might go on to cause illness in future. She also said that taxi drivers in London had increased cognitive ability due to all their road map memorising!
I attended with Dr Clare Daly and her team, Dynamigo, an AI learning platform designed to help children learn more holistically, giving them blended animal profiles to best describe their learning type and help tailor their content to suit their needs. All the talks were really fascinating, with tech expert Patty O’Callaghan weighing in on AI tutors and how her kids learn, Gavin Oattes beguiling us with the wonders of the Big Crisp (we have all had a big crisp) and Brian Baglow talking about the importance of play for neural development.
Throughout these talks, I was hidden behind a poster, scribing live, with my work projected on the screen as I worked. This time I used some templates I’d prepared in advance, which helped me immensely as I wasn’t too stressed about laying things out in the moment and was able to focus on just filling them out!
Feedback from the audience was phenomenal; they really enjoyed seeing my process (including a LOT of pinching, zooming and moving things around!) and found the art on the screen soothing, as well as a good way to stay focused on the talks. When there were particularly fun metaphors mentioned, like Gavin’s forests and trees, I had a lot of fun designing them as visuals on screen! I even got a round of APPLAUSE in the end, which I was very touched by as I never expect this at all. A couple of people had no idea I was there, as I was tucked away behind the scenes!
I’m always struck by people’s responses to my work, and how I do it. It was fantastic to hear from audience members with ADHD and dyslexia telling me how much the art helped transform their experience of being there, and I was thrilled to hear that it had made such a significant difference. Live illustration is such a fun way to make these sorts of formal events more accessible and playful, and my experience at the Edtech showcase really drove that home for me. Here’s a photo of me in action, iPad in hand speaking to Lara and showing her what I’d made for her talk!
Watch this space for the work itself, and for future scribbly events…
