Over the last decade, the SXSW EDU conference has grown from a small gathering – one that was just tacked onto the much larger SXSW film, music, and tech conference – to one of the top annual education events of the year! This year was no exception, with 8,000+ attendees making their way to the Austin Convention Center, followed by a celebratory happy hour crawl through the city streets.
The Edtech Insiders crew attended to check out some of the key themes, sessions, and events (and to record some live interviews coming soon to the podcast). Whether you attended or weren’t able to make it this year, we hope you enjoy The Edtech Insiders rundown of SXSW EDU 2024!
Theme 1: The Kids Are Not Alright
This year’s SXSW EDU had something for everyone, with over a dozen “Program Tracks.” However, the one theme that truly connected the entire conference was mental health.
36 sessions were specifically tagged with mental health and wellness, but in sessions on topics ranging from literacy to edtech to civic engagement, presenters continued to come back again and again to the mental health crisis amongst teens and young adults.
In reflecting on the lessons learned from the Harlem Children’s Zone, Geoffrey Canada shared that social-emotional support for children is the critical factor in scaling any change or model, whether it is place-based or not.
In his keynote talk “It’s Time to Stop Talking About the Literacy Crisis”, Spencer Russell also honed in on the role of parents in supporting not just literacy, but also a positive learner mindset. While he was advocating for the science of reading, his critique was truly that schools have focused too much on technical teaching strategies and have not acknowledged how home life can be a powerful lever to uplift student success.
In his session, Diego Perez (aka Yung Pueblo) brought the focus to the mental health of educators and adults, recommending that we prioritize “self-love” and let go through meditation.
Mental health even stole the show at the Launch StartUp competition, which saw startup Maro, which expands access to mental health screening and support, win the grand prize. Maro CEO Kenzie Butera Davis said:
"For us, this means that we just gained an incredible amount of exposure to new school districts who are really looking for ways to support their student's mental health, so we're really grateful for that velocity to accelerate our growth as an organization, but also to scale our impact and screen more students."
- Maro CEO Kenzie Butera Davis
Theme 2: Aye AI, Captain
Consistent with past conferences, this year leaned in on the K12 education world. As expected, one of the hottest topics for K12 was the role of AI (or lack thereof) in schools. Key takeaways included:
Educators are experimenting with AI, but not meaningfully implementing AI tools at scale.
Student use of generative AI is sporadic, and most commonly used around writing assignments.
A lack of access to the paid versions of AI tools has limited educator and student use.
Policy-makers are often caught between the “don’t ban AI” and “don’t visibly support AI” positions, as they weigh the legal, political, and operational issues with AI, especially in the hands of children.
The overall rate of change in AI is too fast for our systems to keep up. That said, it is also reinforcing a “wait-and-see” approach as the tech continues to evolve so quickly.
Theme 3: Social Justice in an Election Year
Hanging over the conference was the political reality that 2024 would see Biden running against Trump once again. The political divisions in the United States over the last decade have had a profound impact on education institutions and organizations, and it doesn’t look like that is coming to an end.
SXSW EDU featured a number of sessions on Liberated Pedagogy and social justice in the classroom during this difficult and divisive time in politics. One standout session was “How Do We Find the Good at a Time Like This?” from Jennifer Gonzalez at Cult of Pedagogy, and Rebecka Peterson at Union High School. As national teacher of the year, Peterson’s theme is all about “finding the good” with stories at the classroom level that have surprising salience at the macro-level. The result was a powerful and hopeful session!
There was also some interesting overlap between AI and social justice in discussions of AI and bias and how it plays out amongst low-income students and students of color. In tech circles, bias in AI is usually in the context of what generative models produce, and especially in regards to image generation. However, there were some other important perspectives brought up around this topic:
Jamie Nunez, in his packed session AI's Impact on Students of Color: Rethinking Digital Wellness raised a new twist on an old issue; students of color are being disproportionately accused of using AI for cheating. Students of color shared their reluctance to use AI due to concerns ranging from academic integrity to the perception that most AI systems “sound white.”
In the session Generative AI in Education: Learn from the Pioneers, Amanda Bickerstaff of AI For Education was quick to point out that access to and utilization of AI is lower in communities of color, raising concerns about accelerating achievement gaps.
The Edtech Insiders SXSW EDU MVP: Mike Yates
While the main conference stages cycled through big name speakers and touched on many of your typical education conference themes, the Teach for America (TFA) Reinvention Lab, and particularly Mike Yates, a lead product manager and designer on the Lab team and author of the Schoolish newsletter, hosted many of the most unique and talked about sessions, including:
A “Future of Learning House” featuring a number of entrepreneurs and educators showcasing innovations in edtech.
A hands-on workshop where participants built working education products in real time with AI.
A session where participants got a chance to design their own shoes as an artistic representation of themselves.
An AI poetry slam. Yes, that’s right. An AI poetry slam.
The Edtech Insiders SXSW EDU Stand-Outs
A few sessions really pushed beyond normal conference fare and caught our attention, especially those connecting education with media, such as:
On the Record: Music in Every Classroom: Bill Carbone, TeachRock.org/ Rock & Soul Forever Foundation, Imani Wilson, Teachrock.org/ Rock & Soul Forever Foundation, DJ Reborn, DJs for Justice, Rapsody, Roc Nation
Takeaways from Our Freshman Year of D&D in Schools: Dan Ackerman, Gizmodo, Shelly Mazzanoble, Wizards of the Coast, Dan Rawson, Wizards of the Coast, Kade Wells, Sioux Falls Public Schools & University of Sioux Falls
Edtech Insiders After Dark
Rivaling the conference itself, the happy hours, pub crawls, and dinners were a great way for everyone at the conference to connect and re-energize after a long winter. (PS: the title for this section is a tribute to the legendary Tony Wan’s Substack Edtech After Dark)
Edtech Insiders hosted an amazing Happy Hour as part of our time at SXSW EDU, alongside our sponsors and collaborators Finetune, Clever, Tyton Partners, FOHE, and Common Sense! Over 300 people attended for an evening of laughs, drinks, and catching up in person! What a way to close out an unforgettable conference.
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Edtech Insiders Live Events
Bay Area EdTech Happy Hour
Our next Bay Area Edtech Happy Hour will be held at Blacksmith Bar in Redwood City on March 21! Join Edtech Insiders and our sponsor EM Marketing to connect, collaborate, and enjoy a drink together! Anyone is welcome to attend.
We’d love to see you there, please RSVP if you plan to attend!
We are super excited to have Kyron Learning join as co-host for our ASU + GSV Happy Hour in San Diego on April 15! With their support and our other sponsors stepping up, we were able to open 100 more slots for attendees! Please sign up for the waitlist at the RSVP link, and we will lottery off the final open spots. We hope to see you there!
1. GenAI in Edtech: $8,324 Million Market Valuation by 2033
New predictive reports by Market.us Scoop share an estimated $8,324 million market valuation for GenAI in edtech by 2033! They also share what they are seeing when it comes to themes, trends, and challenges in the industry.
As technology, social media, and mental health struggles continue to take center stage among education leaders as and interrelated issues, the WSJ gave some coverage to the issue with a look into schools that are requiring students to lock their cell phones away during the day.
While implementation is proving slow and challenging, policy in California has approved an ambitious, multi-billion dollar initiative to make high-quality education available to each of the state’s 4-year-olds, an estimated 400,000 children. This comes at a time when affordable child care before kindergarten is increasingly inaccessible, and offers a chance to set all students up for success before they even begin kindergarten.
In an attempt to release a new, streamlined version of the FAFSA this year, government agencies are causing more problems for students applying for aid: extremely decreased application counts, user difficulty, late processing and communication with both universities and applicants, and more that is yet to be resolved for the upcoming school year.
This edition of the Edtech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored in part byAIR Show!
Join the AI Revolution in education! Register for AIR Show, April 13-15, at the San Diego Convention Center for brilliant keynotes, hands-on workshops, student hackathons, 125+ leading AI in EDU companies, and more.
Podcast Deep Dive: Interviews From The Common Sense Summit
We have had some amazing guests on The Edtech Insiders Podcast in the last few weeks! Both of our episodes featuring lightning speed interviews from speakers and attendees at the first Common Sense Summit on America's Kids and Families hosted by Common Sense Media are out now!
The conference brought together advocates, researchers, youth leaders, policymakers, and other experts to take stock of America's kids and families and explore solutions to the most pressing issues across four core topic areas: kids and technology, youth mental health, early childhood education, and K–12 education.
Check out both episodes below for a look into the amazing leaders and community this conference brought together!
This edition of the Edtech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored byTuck Advisors.
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