What a Day Out Reminded Me About Tech and Calm Learning
It’s rare these days that I work anywhere other than my home office, my local café (if I’m feeling fancy), or sitting in my car squeezing in five minutes before school pick-up or an after-school club dash.
So when I was invited to Bett last week, I was genuinely over the moon.
For anyone unfamiliar, Bett is a huge EdTech conference held in London, welcoming over 50,000 people each day across its three-day run. Educators, developers, founders, researchers — all in one place, talking about the future of education and technology.
The 5.30am alarm was… a shock (and unfortunately woke my three-year-old — sorry to my husband for dealing with that). But the two-hour train journey from Dorset to London, entirely on my own, was bliss.
No snack requests.
No headphone stealing.
Just quiet thinking time.
For the day, I was fully in tech entrepreneur mode: meeting app founders, talking to educators, and learning from people who are years ahead of me in the EdTech space.
And there were… so. many. apps.
Thousands of them.
All ambitious.
All hoping to change the world.
But as I wandered through the halls, one thing kept jumping out at me.
Most of the apps designed for younger children were built in exactly the same way.
Bright colours.
Flashing animations.
Rewards.
Gamification.
Tiny design tricks engineered to keep children coming back for more.
It stopped me in my tracks — and reminded me why I’m so proud of what we’ve built with The Phonics App.
Because from the very beginning, we made a deliberate choice not to follow that path.
No dopamine hits.
No rewards.
No tricks to keep children glued to the screen longer than they need to be.
Instead, we focused on calm, clarity, and research-led phonics — something children can dip into for five minutes and happily close again without a meltdown.
That choice hasn’t always been the loudest one in the EdTech space.
But it has been the right one.
And in 2025, it was recognised in a way that meant a great deal to us:
🏆 Made For Mums Tech Awards – Editor’s Choice (Best Parenting Innovation)
🏆 Digital Education Awards
The judges described The Phonics App as:
“Beautifully designed, calm, and research-led, standing out in a market dominated by highly gamified products.”
That sentence sums up everything we hoped to create.
If you’re looking for a tool that genuinely teaches phonics, can be used for just a few minutes a day, and can be closed without tears or tension, The Phonics App was built for exactly that purpose.