EdTech Digest

FETC unveils an agenda for human leadership in the age of AI. GUEST COLUMN | by Jennifer Womble Patrick Gittisriboongul speaking at FETC 2026 Executive Leadership Summit in Orlando. CREDIT: Future of Education Technology Conference These are extraordinary times in education. Artificial intelligence can generate a lesson, summarize a report and analyze a mountain of district data. However, it cannot decide what a community owes its children. It cannot earn a teacher’s trust, recognize a student’s

The families with the most resources are buying more human support, not less. GUEST COLUMN | by Alicia Kacharia There is a lot of excitement about how, for the first time, every student can access a personalized tutor regardless of income, location, or level. To be fair, AI is great at delivering detailed, personalized content. I believe AI can personalize better than any teacher managing 50 students. So, for a motivated student conjugating French at 11 p.m., AI is an incredibly useful tool. &#

The nation’s broadest restriction may buy educators time—but only teacher literacy can provide a durable path forward. GUEST COLUMN | by Sohan Choudhury On September 2, Mayor Mamdani announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI in New York City public schools, covering pre-K through eighth grade. About 600,000 students are affected. It is the broadest restriction of its kind in the country. ‘Teachers are overwhelmed. Parents are worried. Nobody has reached a consensus o

A new Cengage report finds entry-level jobs increasingly demand work-ready skills—pushing graduates toward internships, stepping-stone roles, and self-directed AI learning. An entry-level job is supposed to be where experience begins. Increasingly, graduates say experience is required just to get through the door. According to Cengage’s 2026 Graduate Employability Report, 77 percent of graduates believe employers expect more experience than an entry-level candidate should reasonably have. More

A K–12 HR leader’s honest take on AI in the hiring process. GUEST COLUMN | by Jennifer Duvall Not long ago, hiring a teacher meant posting a job, collecting applications, reading through stacks of resumes, calling references, and sitting across a table from a candidate to get a feel for their potential impact in the classroom. It was time-consuming, imperfect, and deeply human. That process is changing faster than most K–12 districts realize. ‘hiring a teacher …That process is chang

Hands-on STEM learning can be expensive, complex, or difficult to bring into the classroom. An immersive learning ecosystem from Avantis Education, creators of ClassVR, uses virtual reality (VR) to help remove those barriers and give students access to experiences that might otherwise be out of reach. Designed for middle and high school classrooms, EduverseSTEM brings together ClassVR Xcelerate headsets, curriculum-aligned content, classroom management tools, and a Gold Standard Project-Based Le

For all the attention paid to how children learn to read, writing instruction has not always received the same classroom time or investment. Mystery Writing from Discovery Education aims to help close that gap with an evidence-based, supplemental K–5 writing program built for everyday classroom use. The open-and-go lessons help students develop their writing through engaging real-world hooks, explicit instruction, scaffolded practice, discussion, independent writing, and reflection. The approach

On building trust, strengthening community, and connecting the people and ideas that move education forward. INTERVIEW | by Victor Rivero For more than two decades, Jenn Womble has helped shape one of education technology’s most influential annual gatherings. As Conference Chair of FETC, she has earned a reputation as one of the field’s most respected and trusted leaders—not only for guiding the conference’s continued growth, but for cultivating the relationships that make it matter. Equally at

Certification exams produce a clear result: pass or fail. The harder question comes before test day—how can educators know whether students are truly ready? iCEV’s Certification Readiness Tool helps answer that question by giving Career and Technical Education (CTE) educators a clearer picture of student preparedness before learners sit for an industry certification exam. The tool uses real-time performance data to identify which students are ready for certification exams and which may need addi

Brighteye partners Ben Wirz and David Guérin. The firm has secured a $72 million first close for Fund III, targeting the convergence of education, AI, productivity, and workforce technology. The boundary between education and work technology is fading. Learning now continues throughout a career, while AI is changing the skills and judgment people need on the job. Investors are responding by looking beyond conventional edtech toward tools that expand human capability. That trend is behind Brighte

The Concentric360 Action Center. A student information system can tell a school leader that a student is absent. It can’t tell them why—or what to do about it before that absence becomes a pattern and the pattern becomes a lost year. That’s the gap Concentric Educational Solutions built Concentric360 to close. Concentric360 is an integrated platform that gives school systems, municipalities, workforce boards, and community organizations a shared way to identify the needs behind school absenteeis

One robot, multiple subjects, and hundreds of ready-to-use lessons: Photon Robot, from Photon Education, gives schools a flexible way to bring hands-on learning into classrooms, STEM labs, makerspaces, media centers, and special education programs. The interactive educational robot works with teaching kits covering artificial intelligence, robotics and coding, physics, ecology, social-emotional learning (SEL), early education, and special education. Rather than requiring schools to purchase a se

In a world overflowing with information, finding reliable, well-organized material for a specific learning need can take almost as much time as learning the subject itself. Encyclo-AI aims to change that by turning a topic or question into a personalized “Smartbook” in just a few minutes. Rather than delivering a fragmented collection of AI-generated answers, Encyclo-AI organizes information into a progressive learning experience designed for deeper exploration. Smartbooks can be read on a compu

Samsung expands Solve for Tomorrow across the UK and Ireland, combining classroom resources, regional workshops, mentoring and employer experience. One growing trend in education technology is moving students beyond simply using technology—and challenging them to design with it, solve authentic problems and connect classroom learning to potential careers. Samsung UK is advancing that approach through the seventh year of Solve for Tomorrow, its free, curriculum-linked competition inviting 11-to-1

GUEST COLUMN | by Julia Fallon A few years ago, I noticed something I haven’t been able to unsee: somewhere along the way, education stopped talking about improvement and started talking about innovation. The word is everywhere: conference themes, strategic plans, grant proposals, product launches, and job titles. The more I heard the word, the more I wondered whether we all meant the same thing. After more than thirty years working at the intersection of education and technology, I&#8217

WitSpeak gives English learners an AI-powered way to practice speaking, receive immediate feedback, and build confidence. Many English learners know what they want to say—but hesitate when it is time to say it aloud. WitSpeak is an AI-powered English speaking coach designed to turn that hesitation into regular, focused practice. Available for iPhone and Android, the app presents realistic speaking prompts and analyzes each response for fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Learners sp

Students deserve purposeful technology that prepares them for the future without replacing the teachers, relationships, and timeless principles at the heart of education. GUEST COLUMN | by Adam Mangana Just in time for the new school year, the U.S. Department of Education released guidance on technology use in the classroom. The initiative recognizes that schools must embrace emerging technologies to prepare students for the future while maintaining a clear distinction between passive recreatio

After 32 years at the helm of CoSN, Keith Krueger reflects on a profession transformed, a community strengthened, and the critical work still ahead. INTERVIEW | by Victor Rivero Throughout his tenure, Keith Krueger has been one of the clearest, steadiest, and most consequential voices in educational technology. Under his leadership, CoSN grew into the premier professional community for K-12 technology executives—a source of advocacy, knowledge, connection, and credibility amid extraordinary cha

Discovery Education’s new K–5 program brings inquiry, primary sources, and literacy-rich learning into busy elementary classrooms. Social studies often competes for time in the elementary school day. Teachers may have only a short instructional block—and little time to build rigorous lessons from scratch. Social Studies Essentials, a new K–5 supplemental program from Discovery Education, was built for that reality. Grounded in the C3 Framework, it provides ready-to-use lessons for exploring hist

Ambient AI is capturing students who never chose to participate—and exposing a critical gap in child privacy protections. GUEST COLUMN | by Dona J. Fraser Traditional K-12 privacy policies assume a simple transaction: a student downloads an app, opens a learning portal, or visits a website, establishing a clear line of data collection. As students return to classrooms this fall, that model is collapsing under the weight of ambient artificial intelligence. Consider the reality of modern hallway i