FETC 2026 Brought the State of Education into Sharp Focus

Looking back—and flying forward from a conference that captured where teaching and learning are headed next.

UNPACKING EDTECH | by Mark Gura

Driving home, the view in my rearview mirror was crowded with countless glimpses of possibilities for improved teaching and learning speeding toward our classrooms.

It’s hard to sum up an event like FETC—a massive meeting of like-minded professionals intent on mining the experience deeply and taking away actionable insights and discoveries gathered in just a few action-packed days. And like the others, I’d had my dose of Vitamin PD and left invigorated and energized.

Why do I attend FETC again and again? Because ours is a rich, dynamic, rapidly changing field that moves forward not in brisk strides, but in moonshot leaps. Its changes require serious probing and reflection in order to follow and understand the state of the field. And, also… I attend because I love it!

A mega-PD event like this, staged at the beginning of the year, brings so much of importance into proper focus for me. And with the school year already humming and a full semester beckoning ahead, so much of what I take away seems actionable, ready for real-world application.

But where do I begin to run down my conference experience? Hah—that’s just as difficult a decision to make as was choosing from the overwhelming buffet of workshops, info sessions, panel discussions, and one-on-one impromptu conversations with other members of the tribe.

I conducted my usual, ongoing personal “Hey, how’s your conference going? What’ve you seen that’s moved the dial?” survey with colleagues I rubbed elbows with on opposing sides of the conference center’s escalators. This imprecise science informed that I was sharing the event with thousands of kindred spirits—fellow, over-committed educators, many of them serial conference attendees. These were colleagues thirsty for some skinny on what works and what’s next; fellow travelers well-caffeinated and inspired by the phenomenon of sheer blue-sky possibility.

Leadership

Yes, the conference program offerings were listed by Leadership Tracks, a smart way to help attendees maximize their time and navigate their way through more than anyone could ever hope to take full advantage of.

But beyond that labeling, leadership—especially mature, step-up-to-the-plate peer leadership—was everywhere to be seen.

Locations

I’ve structured the following report in three major segments: UPSTAIRS (where most of the conference sessions were held), DOWNSTAIRS in the Exhibition Hall (where resources, products, and demonstrations of tech-driven instructional practices were to be found), and ESCALATOR—an in-between area where ideas were hatched, conversations took place, and connections gelled.

Here we go…

Downstairs in the Exhibit Hall: Magic, Robots, Authors, and More

Bigger and Bigger Magic

I’m always interested to find out what will come into view as, for the first time at a conference, I float through the entrance to the Exhibit Hall. This time around it was big magic—I mean a very large, beautifully designed demo area for MagicSchool, one of numerous AI-forward teaching tool suites to be found this year.

I was dazzled by purple—MagicSchool’s ID color—as Chandani, my guide, began to show me what MagicSchool is about.

MagicSchool’s website announces itself as “The #1 AI platform for Districts—Safe, district-aligned AI for schools that provides support, sparks creativity, and improves student learning outcomes.” There’s a great deal offered there, so, dyed-in-the-wool teacher that I am, I tend to recommend colleagues find their way in through the Solutions for Teachers path.

There are others for Schools, Superintendents, Chief Academic Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Principals, and (ta-da!) Students. The Teacher path highlights “AI-powered teaching tools to support educators with lesson planning, differentiation, writing assessments, communicating clearly, and so much more.”

And to MagicSchool’s credit, despite appearing to be the instructional digital Swiss Army Knife of the moment, the site provides an intuitive interface to help teachers find the tools they need quickly and easily—using the show an exemplar feature in every tool. And they’re designed to eliminate complex prompting and deliver outputs in seconds while still allowing teachers to contextualize further for their own particular school.

For my short test drive, I took out for a spin the much-discussed Writing Feedback toolset. I was impressed not only with the teacher-friendliness and ease of use, but also by its flexibility—allowing teachers to pull in standard items like rubrics from outside MagicSchool and paste in or upload student writing from its original digital source.

Provided the teacher chooses to use such tools as a way to increase his or her own reach in responding to student efforts, this indeed seems like a powerful next-level resource for improved teaching and learning. The kind of magic I was looking for.

A little conference flavor. Mark’s pick for best exhibit team shirt of the conference.

Out of the Box and Into the Classroom

I stopped at the MERGE EDU booth. Their website states: “Merge EDU brings science, exploration, and discovery to life with interactive 3D experiences you can hold in your hands.”

I spoke with CEO Franklin Lyons, who explained that the Merge Cube lets students hold virtual objects and rotate them from any angle—without complex or expensive computer setups. He called it “Easy augmented reality for the masses.”

Lyons feels they offer a powerful innovation that enables immersive learning through interaction with 3D content—an area where they plan to continue innovating. He added that today’s kids are learning how to learn, developing habits that will define careers built on inventing and creating. Kids are going to surprise us—not just learning, but participating in the global economy and inventing things.

And the Box, Itself…

3 DUX/DESIGN provides design and engineering instructional materials made of carefully connected cardboard pieces. Kids can make models, prototypes, and displays—old school with modern twists, including optional electronic components like lights and motors.

The samples on display had that heartwarming built-by-kids’ hands look while remaining true STEM learning artifacts. Even better, the product was created by a young woman and her brother while they were still in public school—and the booth was manned by Ayana herself and her mother, Marcia. 

Meeting the Classroom at the Threshold of Its Needs: Robots

For me, one of the most “can’t wait to see what shows up on the exhibit floor this year” items that gets my pulse racing is the student robotics offerings. This conference didn’t disappoint. 

I hit the Exhibition Hall looking for things of interest and hoping to see some new ideas in the world of student robotics. The Sphero booth was truly impressive. The folks on the other side of the table were welcoming and proud of Sphero’s continuum of robotics and STEM-related resources that now addresses the needs of students from very young ages on up through high school.

There’s their BOLT robot that I’ve been familiar with for years, but also now: indi, mini, and RVR robots. And it seems smart to me that if a school is satisfied with one segment of the array, it can expand comfortably to include items for the full range of grade levels—making hands-on STEM learning a prominent part of school learning culture.

I couldn’t resist taking a look at their website when I got home from the conference and was somewhat stunned at the full gamut of ancillary resources offered to support instruction in engineering, coding, AI, and more. The landing page shouts, “Make learning fun. Because it should be. Sphero helps you engage students while preparing them with CS, STEM, CTE, and AI literacy skills.” I love the sentiment, and what I saw at their booth seemed totally in line with the promise.

Vey Coleman with the ABii robot

Many years ago, when I started with student robotics, the context was “someday there will actually be robots in our world…” That has totally changed, as robots are now a prominent part of our world and kids know it.

So it resonated strongly for me when one of the use-case scenarios offered for the cute ABii robot shown to me by Vey of Van Robotics was to assign an ABii to play the role of Teacher Assistant/Study Buddy at the learning stations that are ubiquitous in elementary-grade classrooms.

Instead of teachers relying on students to self-start, self-direct, and self-regulate at these independent learning areas, ABii can show them what to do and guide them through doing it—interacting with them in a friendly, supportive way and efficiently keeping them on task.

VAN describes its classroom robots as AI-enabled social robots that deliver highly personalized, rigorous instruction. I can see the outcome being not only increased content-area learning, but also development of skills in interacting with technology and using it in the comfortable, purposeful way that will be common in the world today’s youngsters are growing into.

Chase Stone of Ez-robot showed me its appealing and practical humanoid robot staring at me from the display table. But also—and this kind of amazed me—a robot created through 3D printing. This life-sized robot sparked my imagination and had me think about all of the unrealized, as of yet, potential ways robots will continue to be more and more practical, further necessitating increased learning in the important area of applied STEM.

Industrial Robotics

With the currently deepening trend in school instructional programs to give Career and Technical Education more bandwidth and interest, it wasn’t surprising to see that VEX, a robotics resource provider of highly respected materials, has addressed this need with practical resources.

I was shown a display of VEX CTE—not humanoid robots, but industrial-oriented robotic arms and conveyor belts and the like. Wonderful to see providers finding instructional needs and filling them deftly.

Marty (below) was one of a good number of robotics resources that showed up at the conference oriented toward very young students and intended to teach them very simple, screen-free coding and foster general understanding about how to live and work with robots. But just look at that plastic face! I wanted to take him home and learn with him.

Robotics for a Very Human Purpose

I had an uplifting conversation with Shawn Baram of Forward Education about their Coding for Good Kit. I love the title, and I understand kids love the kit.

Sean explained that with it, kids learn how to make the world be a better place. They learn in a real-world context how they can be better humans by contributing to things like sustainability, climate action, and renewable energy. The learning relates to careers aligned with these areas for future change-makers. And at the same time, they just happen to be learning about coding and robotics—and having fun in the process.

Yes, there was more in student robotics that I just couldn’t get to this time. But I’ll get them, and more, at FETC 2027.

Authors

As part of my action-packed, man-on-an-inspiration-harvesting mission, I managed to have some great one-on-ones with a few of the many author/presenters at the conference.

In between the lines of their books and our conversations about them, I found a deep caring for the human side of teaching. And while that wasn’t what one might expect at an AI-rich EdTech conference, it was wonderful to explore it with these bright, articulate education writers.

Jenna Copper, one of the authors of Keeping the Wonder: An Educator’s Guide to Magical, Engaging, and Joyful Learning, explained that the book is structured around four key elements that fuel engagement—surprise, curiosity, freedom, and inspiration—and offers practical strategies to K–12 educators to create lessons that are fun and compelling. My reaction? We need more of THAT!

I truly enjoyed chatting with Todd Nesloney, co-author of Kids Deserve It! Pushing Boundaries and Challenging Conventional Thinking. The book asks wonderful questions: What if learning was exciting? What if students felt important and empowered every time they walked into the school building? What if parents looked forward to calls from their children’s teachers and principals? And it offers wise responses as well, encouraging readers to think big and make learning fun and meaningful for students.

I talked with teacher Jennifer Casa-Todd who, along with student Karen Phan, wrote Hopes for School: A Student’s Experience and Ideas for Educational Transformation. I love that this working educator offers real-world responses to the strong points made by a student who writes about the ways that her early enthusiasm for learning died due to the rote practices of schooling.

I asked Aaron Polonsky for the gist of his book Dolphins in Trees. He replied, “This is a book about empathy, and about how despite our differences, we can lift one another up. It’s used with leadership teams and for bedtime stories.”

Dr. Sam Fecich’s book EduMagic: A Guide for Preservice Teachers offered still more magic at the conference. This book challenges the thought that “teaching” begins only after certification and college graduation. Instead, it describes how students in teacher preparation programs have value to offer their future colleagues, even as they are learning to be teachers.

Upstairs at the Sessions

The conference was well organized, sorting an endless buffet of professional learning opportunities into what the official program described as “Curated Session Tracks Designed to Spark Transformative Experiences and Actionable Insights.”

These were listed as District Leaders, School Leaders, IT Leaders, Classroom Leaders, Coach Leaders, Inclusion Leaders, Esports Leaders, and Library Leaders. This seemed so on-target, as leadership has asserted itself over the past while as a much-voiced trend in education.

During my own lengthy career, I’ve served in most of those roles. But I was attending the conference as a sort of self-styled Man from Mars: curiosity-driven, EdTech fan and enthusiast. This set me free to follow my fancy, exercising my intuition and poking my nose into gatherings that appealed to my heart and love for teaching and learning.

Here’s a short list of things that exerted a strong gravitation pull. The titles alone speak of leveling up in our rapidly evolving field:

Workshops: A.I. Classroom Survivor: Teacher Tools to Outwit, Outplan, and Outlast the A.I. Blindside; Real-World Ready: Unlocking Student Potential with AI in Education
Posters: Ready to Rumble? Get Your Combat Robotics Program Rolling!; Digital Detectives: Teaching Students to Navigate Misinformation and Media Bias
Concurrent Sessions: Bringing Nature Into Learning: Environmental Neuroscience for Inclusive Classrooms; AI Optimism: Redefine Learning in Any Classroom; Unleashing Creativity and Retention Through Visual Note-Taking; The Future is Human

And so many more. There were immersive theaters and labs and leadership roundtables. And there were panel discussions—one of which struck a particularly resonant chord for me: “Teaching Creativity and Durable Skills in an AI World.”

Here, I listened to some really smart, actually school-informed back-and-forth by a few experts seated onstage in front of a large audience. But truly, the fact alone that such a session was convened and well attended was satisfying for this true believer. I saw it as a well-placed step on the crucial path to raising the status of fostering student creativity—an area of education I feel the field must walk much further.

Escalator: Chatting with Insightful Colleagues

Positive Change Going for It… Big Time!

One of the most ambitious and inspiring groups I came across during my time at the conference is the Thinkering Collective. Here’s my impression, but if—like me—you strongly feel that the field needs something to finally make the leap to a better model of education than the one we’ve inherited, then also take a look at their website, where I found the quotes below and a great deal more:

“Thinkering Collective—where ideas grow into impact.
At Thinkering, we believe change begins with curiosity. We support educators and communities in turning bold questions into real-world learning and measurable outcomes.
Humanize Learning | Thinkering Media is a publication amplifying curiosity-driven education, community research, and bold ideas shaping our future. Join us as we build in public at the world’s first nonprofit impact incubator…”

Sitting with Jim and Garret, I had one of those pulse-quickening conversations with like-minded, just-met colleagues. They pointed out that there are many of us who’ve come to an alternative understanding of education and, perhaps, have formed a vision of how it can work better, if only…

Thinkering is a collective, gathering up these individual points of bright light so that they may shine together and have true impact on the real world of education. Power to effect change through collaboration and critical mass, I’d call it. They had me at “Impact”! I, for one, feel that essential change is long overdue. And my sense is that this FETC conference was a sort of appetizer for much of what we’ve been waiting for: impactful change that’s on its way.

Vicki Davis – The Cool Cat Teacher

Vickie and Mark with Victor Rivero.

The first luminary I had the opportunity to sit and chat with was Vickie Davis, a colleague who’s well known for her perennially popular blog, Cool Cat Teacher. We had a lengthy exchange from which I pulled the items shared below…

Vickie: “I just had my 20th anniversary for Cool Cat Teacher; I started the blog just so I could teach my students how to blog. I had no plans beyond. It’s like social media got a hold of me. Organically, authentically, teachers found me and said we want to listen to her and then… wow, it’s been exciting and a lot of fun.

I teach AP computer science, eight through twelve. But I’m an I.T coach for the whole school, K–12.

My students teach me a lot. We talk about the issues of the time. Right now, AI companion apps are such a problem. Fooled middle schoolers. There are some kids who are just… every single thing they do, they’re asking AI—should they use it or not? I have them generate a report with Perplexity and have them calculate the error rate.

This is my first FETC. Being around other people who do what I do, it’s automatically energizing. There’s something about face-to-face meetings.

When I go to a conference, I want to see people use stuff. I want to touch the stuff in the vendor hall. I want to talk to people. I want to hear what people are talking about. That charges me up because I have to model learning for my students.

I’ve already got a bunch of things that I’m going to teach and show them, that we need to talk about. I like learning.

And in the age of AI, teaching emotional intelligence is so important. So even though I teach a technology class, we start with emotional intelligence.

My eighth and ninth grade last semester… among the useful things I taught them… number one was prompt stacking and number two was some gratitude journaling.

There’s always going to be a place for great teachers!”

Tim Needles

I sat for a while with Tim Needles, conference presenter and author of the popular book STEAM POWER. I hadn’t seen him for a while and wondered what he’s doing currently.

TIM: “I’m a teacher on special assignment now; I support other teachers with technology. K–12, the whole district. But I co-teach every week because I don’t want to not work with the students. You know, learning about tech tools is great. But implementing them with students, hands-on, is a different thing.”

Let’s talk about the conference. You’ve given a few sessions; can you name me a couple of the ones you were really pleased with?

TIM: “I did one on STEAM Power. I did it along with the keynote and three kids that were in the keynote. I like doing sessions with kids because it’s like cats in a bag. You don’t know exactly—especially elementary—what they’ll say. They only tell the truth.

It was interesting to share technology they hadn’t seen. They were super excited about it and it was interesting to see their reaction. They’re elementary kids that are using AI often. You don’t see that too often. They do their own podcasts, which is kind of a cool thing, and they do their own TED Talks.”

And how do they use AI?

TIM: “There’s some increased functionality embedded in the tools they use… and they use it to research their topics. AI is very good at research.”

And what other sessions were you really happy with?

TIM: “I do one on student engagement. That’s always a big thing and, you know, it’s one of those things that transcends technology—engaging students, giving them choice, giving them voice, and then also restructuring the way we teach.”

And the conference overall?

TIM: “It’s kind of wonderful to go to these face-to-face conferences. It’s got that magic that’s human, that’s special.”

Joyce and Tom Whitby

I spoke with Joyce and Tom Whitby. I’ve known these two since way back in the day when I headed up EdTech for the NYC school system. Like myself, they keep their eyes wide open and focused on where the field is going.

I asked them what they saw at the conference that really caught their attention—what they feel is up “NEXT”…

Joyce went first: “Everybody’s got AI in everything. And in a lot of these sessions they’re talking about how to engineer prompts; and I’m playing with that like everybody else.

But after 40 years in education, I just don’t see everyday teachers sitting there and really spending all of their time engineering prompts. For the next thing, I think they need to have tools that are going to help them do more with less, that are going to help them personalize instruction on the fly, and that are going to help them feel that their efforts during that day were really spent on improving learning for their students.”

Tom offered: “I saw a thing called DA+—they’re building an online community of superintendents so that they can share common problems and provide content that’s useful for superintendents: a collaborative community, which is the best way for any adults to learn.

When somebody gets their degree to become an administrator, the courses that they take are in line with education, which makes sense. But is that balanced out with leadership courses? Administrators are leaders before they’re anything else.

So, they’ve established DA+, and it’s working with 200 superintendents. But right now, there are 16,000 superintendents in the United States. So they’ve got a long way to go.”

And for me, that kind of summed up the best of what I experienced at this conference. The field has righted itself after COVID, surfaced from the onset of an AI tsunami, course-corrected to face gusts from what’s often a less-than-optimal political climate, and is in high gear to move forward.

We know what to do and we’re doing it, enabled by the best digital tools we’ve ever had. And yeah—we’ve got a long way to go.

Mark Gura @ FETC 2026

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