Despite platform fatigue, educators use AI to bridge resource gaps

Key points:

• Many educators bemoan a lack of integration between systems
• AI use is on the rise, but is guidance keeping pace?
• What we lose when AI replaces teachers
• For more news on AI in the classroom, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub

Sixty-five percent of educators use AI to bridge resource gaps, even as platform fatigue and a lack of system integration threaten productivity, according to Jotform‘s EdTech Trends 2026 report.

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 percent of educators are “very concerned” over recent cuts to U.S. education infrastructure, 65 percent are now actively using AI. Of those using AI, nearly half (48 percent) use it for both student learning and administrative tasks, such as summarizing long documents and automating feedback.

“We conducted this survey to better understand the pain points educators have with technology,” says Lainie Johnson, director of 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 include:

The integration gap: Although 77 percent of educators say their current digital tools work well, 73 percent 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 percent 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: Fifty-eight percent 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.

This press release originally appeared online.