New EdTech Trends Report Reveals Educators Turning to AI
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Jotform's EdTech Trends 2026 Report finds that 65% of educators use AI to bridge resource gaps, even as platform fatigue and a lack of system integration threaten productivity.
Jotform, a form and no-code automation platform, released EdTech Trends 2026 - A Survey of What's Working, What's Not, and Where AI Is Heading. Based on a survey of 50 K–12 and higher education professionals, the report reveals a resilient workforce looking for ways to combat the effects of significant budget cuts and burnout.
The respondents were teachers, instructors and professors split about equally between higher education and K–12.
While 56% of educators are "very concerned" over recent cuts to US education infrastructure, 65% are now actively using AI. Of those using AI, nearly half (48%) use it for both student learning and administrative tasks, such as summarising long documents and automating feedback.
"We conducted this survey to better understand the problems educators have with technology," says Lainie Johnson, Director, Enterprise Marketing at Jotform. "We were surprised that our respondents like their tech tools so much. Because while the tools themselves are great, their inability to work together causes a problem."
Key Findings from the EdTech Trends 2026 Report
- The integration gap - Although 77% of educators say their current digital tools work well, 73% cite a "lack of integration between systems" as their primary difficulty. "The No. 1 thing I would like for my digital tools to do is to talk to each other," one respondent noted. "I feel like often we have to jump from one platform to another just to get work done."
- Platform fatigue - Educators are managing an average of eight different digital tools, with 50% reporting they are overwhelmed by "too many platforms."
- The burden of manual tasks - Despite the many digital tools they use, educators spend an average of seven hours per week on manual tasks.
- AI for productivity - 58% of respondents use AI most frequently as a productivity tool for research, brainstorming, and writing.
- Data security and ethics - Ethical implications and data security are the top concerns for educators when implementing AI.
