Another successful (and very hot) ISTE is in the books! Orlando certainly brought the heat, along with plenty of great conversations.
The conference expo floor felt a little quieter than usual, and it tracked with something bigger happening in our industry right now: edtech is going through a gut check.
Districts and states have been rolling back screen time in classrooms, and that conversation was very much in the air this year. But right alongside it were sessions on preparing an AI-ready generation for college and the workforce. Even amid the caution, there's real forward motion. Teachers are genuinely excited about what AI can do. They're also, understandably, wary of adding additional tools into their workflows.
These conversations are exactly why this year's theme, Designing the Future of Learning, felt so fitting. It's not enough to just build cool AI features anymore. The industry has to be intentional about how, when, and why technology shows up in the classroom.
The good news? ISTE 2026 was a genuinely great conference. Here's what stood out:
If 2025 was the year everyone declared "we're in the AI era of EdTech," 2026 is the year that statement was really put to the test. And that is where the conversation around data and integration took front stage.
The more AI shows up in EdTech products, the more companies need real, detailed insight into student performance to make any of it actually personalized. Everyone is trying to understand students better so they can tailor learning, not just automate it. That's a good instinct. But it also means the old data silo problem hasn't gone anywhere.
Honestly, from what we saw and heard, most companies aren't solving the data silo problem as much as promising to. The AI layer is advancing fast, but the underlying data plumbing hasn't caught up nearly as quickly. What has changed is the seriousness around security. Not training models on student data is basically unwritten law across edtech at this point, the same default posture we've always taken at Ednition and that companies like Anthropic hold too, but this year we're starting to see it show up explicitly in district RFPs and security policies instead of just being assumed. That's a real maturity signal for the industry, even if the data itself is still messy.
Some of our favorite moments this year weren't on the mainstage or in break-out rooms; they were in our one-on-one conversations.
We heard from SchoolAI about how much they appreciate our push toward simplifying district onboarding, making it genuinely easy for districts to integrate and make connections. We got to enjoy great conversations with the Securly team. And our conversation with ClassBank was a great reminder of why relationships matter; they were vocal about how much they value our depth of knowledge in edtech.
We also had wonderful conversations with our partner, ClassLink. As a certified integration provider of Classlink, we are working on making certification faster and more streamlined for our customers. The Classlink team was kind enough to point out that every vendor that's onboarded to them through Ednition has completed the process without issue and passed certification every time. We're excited to put even more standardized processes in place to match their requirements going forward.
If there's a cloud on the horizon, it's funding. There was a lot of conversation this year about the depletion of ESSR funds and uncertainty ahead in terms of school and district spending on certain categories of education technology. It's a dynamic worth watching.
But even with that uncertainty, and with the industry navigating real tension between AI ambition and student screen-time, we left Orlando feeling good about where things are headed. The companies doing this well are the ones being thoughtful: securing student data by default, being honest about what their AI can and can't do yet, and designing with real classroom constraints in mind rather than around them.
That's the future of learning we want to help design. Here's to keeping it thoughtful, keeping it secure, and keeping the momentum going into the new school year.
Keep Calm and Roster On!
The Ednition Team
