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Edtech expert and author Monica Burns recently joined us for a webinar to discuss the key trends that will be shaping instructional technology this year. Educators and learners have more access now to many different types of technology, and there are strategies and tools that can help your school or district use technology with intention.
In Monica’s conversations with educators across the country, she has noticed 10 instructional tech trends that have emerged. In this blog post, we’ll share these with you so you can make them part of your practice in supporting educators throughout the school year.
Check out the full webinar on demand. ⤵
1. Personalized learning
First, Monica has heard from educators that there is currently an extra push to personalize learning, including assignments, assessments and feedback. The one-size-fits-all approach, of course, doesn’t help every learner, but it’s not easy for educators to do this.
If you’re supporting educators who are looking to personalize more, you can give them easier ways to streamline this personalization so that they can give students multiple options. They can collect all of their work and keep track of what they’re working on all in one place. This can also mean that you’re setting up educators for success by making it easier for them to provide formative feedback. That could be making it simpler to access their digital learning resources and assignments to streamlining the back and forth communication between educators and learners.
How to support educators: Equip teachers with tools that simplify personalized assignments and formative feedback.
2. Leveraging core tools
The next trend Monica shared is to make the most of the tech space educators are already using and streamline that access. This could be Google Classroom, for example. The goal is to reinforce initiatives your team created at the start of the school year. You want to make sure that everyone has exactly what they need to make the most of your core tools. For instance, you could provide a dashboard that streamlines their access to all of their core tools and Google Classroom in one space.
How to support educators: Identify opportunities to enhance existing workflows and access to core tools for educators and learners.
3. Automating workflows
Monica emphasized, “Teachers want really organized spaces. They want things to be easy to find so that they know where to go for all of their resources and make it easier to get those resources to students. So that could be everything from automating document organization, to making sure that things are in the right place, to having those classroom management dashboards so they can keep track of assignments.”
She shared that Hāpara Teacher Dashboard is a “super example” of this.
This tool allows educators to gain visibility across all of the spaces that students might be working on in Google Drive. It makes it easy for educators to see learners’ progress across their recent Google Drive files, preview their assignments and open them to leave formative feedback.
Monica notes that Hāpara Teacher Dashboard connects back to the first trend on the list of personalizing an experience for learners.
She explains, “You can tell what everyone needs, what support might be useful for one student or another during different parts of the year or during different parts of a project they’re working on. So having all of this visible in a space where educators can access resources so it’s super streamlined, can make sure everyone is on track [is helpful].”
She continues, “It’s a more organized, more stress-free environment so teachers know where everything is throughout the school year.”
“This push to automate workflows, to streamline the way educators are looking at their day to day collection and distribution of resources is definitely a big one that has come up in my conversations.”
How to support educators: Provide a tool that automates routine tasks, such as assignment tracking and feedback delivery, to give educators more time for instruction.
4. Using AI to generate instructional content
According to Monica, educators are increasingly dabbling with AI in different ways to support their learners. for resource creation and instructional planning. Teachers are also using AI-driven tools to help with parent emails and IEP goals. However, it’s important to keep “the human at the center of ideas” when using AI for instructional planning for quality and accuracy.
As you support educators, you may see that educators are especially making the shift to generating supplemental resources themselves with AI – versus going to the textbook for supplemental materials or purchasing resources online on a teaching website. This is a benefit because educators can still use their expert-eye to create high-quality resources, but now they can create more materials and personalize them for learners.
You can help educators by providing a teaching and learning space that organizes these materials across a lesson or unit and allows for differentiated instruction and personalized learning. Hāpara Workspace provides one organized space for a class lesson or unit, allowing students to access the resources specific to their learning needs.
How to support educators: Foster conversations about AI’s role in education, while offering tools to help teachers effectively generate and organize AI-created resources for their classrooms.
5. Streamlined unit planning
Efficient unit planning is a growing priority for educators. They want to prepare for the next several months and ensure they have all of their materials ready to go. Teachers want to organize lessons, projects and assessments in ways that save time. They also want to have their digital and non-digital resources prepared in advance so that they can plan, design and assign these with personalization goals.
How to support educators: Offer platforms that streamline planning while making it easy to adapt units for differentiation or personalization.
6. Fostering collaboration
Collaboration among educators — both synchronously and asynchronously — is a goal for a lot of school teams. Whether teachers work together to vet resources or discuss shared goals, fostering professional interactions brings valuable insights and improves lesson delivery. Teaching teams need time, though, to collaborate and plan vertically or horizontally, and that can be a challenge. Teams need ways to streamline unit planning so they can create meaningful and differentiated resources together.
How to support educators: Create spaces for teachers to share, review and refine resources, including both in-person and digital collaboration tools.
7. Gamifying learning for engagement
Another big trend that Monica has heard in conversations is gamification and creating high engagement experiences for learners. Whether through self-paced activities, interactive tools or digital games, gamification creates learning experiences that keep students motivated.
Monica says, “Essentially, we’re looking to set up students for success in a space where they see learning as a playful, engaging part of their day that has a clear goal and a clear outcome.”
How to support educators: Support teachers with platforms that streamline the distribution and tracking of gamified assignments while allowing for differentiation and personalization.
8. Addressing local initiatives
From state standards to district-wide themes or emerging topics like AI literacy, educators are increasingly asked to adapt instruction to local priorities. These initiatives often require additional resources and thoughtful integration into existing curriculum.
This can feel a bit overwhelming for educators, especially if it is not in their area of expertise. These could be related to ELA, math, social studies, science or foreign language where there core instruction. Educators need a better way to organize those materials resources related to the local initiative. For example,
How to support educators: Provide centralized platforms to organize and distribute materials tailored to specific local initiatives, making them accessible to all teachers.
9. Setting learners up for digital success
The next instructional tech trend is setting up digital learners for success online. With more access to online tools, it’s critical to guide students toward becoming better digital citizens. Educators need visibility into student online activity so they can have conversations about digital citizenship and improve classroom management.
Hāpara Highlights is a browser monitoring tool that gives classroom educators this visibility. It allows teachers to see what learners are doing online. With this insight, teachers can have those digital citizenship conversations that are so important and guide learners’ browsing.
How to support educators: Implement tools that provide real-time insights into learners’ browsing activity and help educators keep learners on track.
10. Leveraging AI-driven tools
Many educational platforms now use AI to enhance processes behind the scenes, such as content suggestions and data analysis. These tools make digital learning safer and more effective while enabling smarter decision-making.
How to support educators: Offer tools that use AI to improve productivity and ensure educators understand how to use them efficiently.
These trends reflect the exciting possibilities that instructional technology brings to K-12 classrooms in 2025. From personalization to student browsing visibility to AI integration, tech directors have the opportunity to empower educators. By investing in tools and strategies that support these growing trends, schools can truly transform teaching and learning experiences.
What trends are you noticing, and how is your school or district keeping up with them?
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