AI Trends in Ed Tech to Watch in 2025

Moving into 2025, educators are growing more familiar with the technology as use cases develop and AI finds niches for deployment in classrooms, administrators’ offices and the outer reaches of the education ecosystem. Here are the AI trends that will impact schools in the coming year.

1. AI Guardrails Will Prevail Over Policy to Guide Use in the Classroom

The inherent complexity and rapid pace of AI development make it extremely challenging for districts to build a workable classroom use policy. Rather than fully vet a policy tailored to every use case, schools are providing basic guidance aimed at keeping students safe, protecting privacy and fostering ethical use.

KEEP READING: Examine generative AI as a tech enabler.

“A lot of schools are realizing this technology is a phenomenon spreading throughout society,” says Miguel Guhlin, director of professional development at TCEA. “Because it’s spreading so fast, they can’t come up with hard-and-fast rules because there are so many different situations. So, they set up guardrails instead to guide usage.”

“Rather than thinking of an AI policy, it should be approached with guardrails or guidelines for schools to follow,” says Tseh-sien Kelly Vaughn, interim dean of the School of Education, Notre Dame de Namur University. “These should include best teaching practices around how educators can critically use the tool. It should guide students’ use of the technology and activate critical thinking to enhance their higher-order thinking skills.”

2. Classroom AI Will Create More Personalized Experiences

Every school has its share of teachers who are comfortable with and excited about trying new technologies to see if they’re capable of delivering classroom value. Many of these early adopters have been busy evaluating AI, developing early use cases that they then share with colleagues, including custom GPTs, AI chatbots trained on specific data sets related to individual students.

“Custom GPTs are about educators designing learning experiences, because that’s what teaching is about, designing experiences that are going to enable students to learn,” says Guhlin.

The use cases for this emerging technology will vary depending on the grade level, so age-appropriate guidance is becoming more widespread for AI.

“Authentic and age-appropriate learning should guide classroom use,” says Vaughn. “Instructors should be mindful of their students’ backgrounds and interests to see how AI can be applicable, and that can be developed in an age-appropriate way as the student gets older.”

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3. AI in Physical Security Will Increase, Especially in Transportation

When it comes to student safety, AI has gained a foothold in physical security. The technology is being used with digital cameras, access control systems and video management platforms to help schools better manage school safety. School transportation is also becoming a growing area for AI use.

Canyons School District in Sandy, Utah, has been using AI technology with its school bus fleet to keep a closer eye on driver behavior and overall bus safety. CSD has found great success with its AI solution, helping the district reduce expenses tied to accident claims, and it is looking to expand its use of AI going forward.

“Our short-term plans include using the technology for bus routing, where AI would determine the most optimal route,” says Jeremy Wardle, CSD’s director of transportation. “We transport about 20,000 students every day. We think AI can help us get more efficient with fuel use and reduce student pickup and drop-off timelines.”

WATCH NOW: Learn how one school district upgraded its physical security tech.

4. AI in Cybersecurity Will Defend Schools from Advanced Cybercrime

As AI’s capabilities grow, schools and businesses aren’t the only entities taking advantage of this technology. Cybercriminals are employing AI to create more believable, more complex and more scalable attacks.

“AI is lowering the barrier of entry for a lot of low-level cybercriminals,” Marcos Christodonte II, vice president and global CISO for CDW, said at the CDW Executive SummIT in October. “AI is allowing them to create malicious software effectively at scale, and they can test that software using AI as well.”

The key to fighting AI attacks, in many cases, is with AI-powered cybersecurity.

“What we need to think about is, how are we leveraging AI as well in order to keep pace?” Christodonte asked.

Many solutions already have integrated AI capabilities. Automated threat detection (through network monitoring, endpoint security and access management) isn’t necessarily new, but these technologies will grow in their sophistication and popularity in the coming year and beyond.

“AI won’t be around in a year or two years. It’ll be around for the next 50, a hundred, a thousand years,” Niall Browne, senior vice president and CISO at Palo Alto Networks, said at the CDW Executive SummIT.

Bonus: AI in Cloud-Based Databases Will Provide Greater Insights

While it doesn’t get the same level of attention as classroom uses for AI, there are great opportunities for bringing generative AI to the cloud-based administrative databases of schools and districts.

“We build private enclaves containing a chat resource to a large language model that people can use without a public LLM learning the data they’re putting in,” explains Roger Haney, chief architect for software-defined infrastructure at CDW. “Chatting with your data doesn’t require a new data store. If you have student data, then we add another model that can create the query in SQL, do the query and pull the data back. Then you can ask it questions, using the data as part of your prompt, and you can talk with your data.”

LEARN MORE: When is the cloud right for deploying artificial intelligence?

When set up with data privacy top of mind, generative AI tools can be used with database platforms to more quickly surface insights from the data to improve both policy and business practices. With this improved pathway for gathering data-driven insights, administrators will be well positioned in 2025 to take the lead on driving even more efficiencies and improvements from AI for their schools.