Trends to Watch in 2025
Technology has the potential to revolutionise education, making a significant impact on the way that teachers work, and students learn. In this article, we explore three trends to watch for 2025 - Artificial Intelligence, Personalised Learning Platforms and Virtual Reality – and look at how they can help teachers to spend more time with students and create a more engaging learning experience for all learners.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education
One of the biggest issues facing the education sector is the high numbers of teachers choosing to leave the profession – not because they don’t love teaching, but because they feel they are not able to spend enough of their time with students, due to the incredibly heavy administrative burden that goes with their chosen metier. Artificial Intelligence can be a game changer – doing what it does well – processing and analysing data – so that teachers can do what they do best, engaging with students and fostering a desire and an ability to learn.
AI can lift some of the burden from teachers in:
- Lesson planning – AI can be used to create tailored learning plans, based on the school’s own data, Government curriculum guidelines, the teacher’s preferred taxonomy and suggestions for lesson materials, activities, and multimedia resources aligned with curriculum standards.
- Marking – AI can help to mark multiple-choice tests and quizzes and play a part in grading some written assignments.
- Scheduling and Notifications: digital scheduling tools can help to manage parent/teacher interviews, managing bookings, notifications and reminders.
- Reports – digital tools can assess and analyse student performance data and generate progress reports for review and finalisation by the teacher.
Of course, the use of AI in schools must be managed and regulated, and the Federal Government has published a framework for generative AI, to ensure its use is responsible and ethical. But with the right guidelines, AI has the potential to change the work landscape for teachers, getting them out from behind screens and paperwork and back in front of students in the classroom.
Tailored learning platforms
Reducing the administrative workload of teachers is important, but technology in the classroom has the potential to do even more. It can provide new ways of engaging students and monitoring their performance, recognising that students learn in different ways and adapting to them for a more inclusive and egalitarian approach.
Tailored learning platforms use artificial intelligence to adapt the learning experience to each student’s preferred of learning – for example, visual or aural. The same curriculum information can be presented to each student differently, ‘leveling the playing field’ and giving all students the opportunity to perform to their best ability. This could include some students with special needs, enabling them to learn in mainstream classrooms.
A learning platform can help to guide students to find answers (not give them answers), to build their confidence. It can engage student in interactive activities, such as quizzes with instant feedback.
Content is based on each student’s individual level – for example, reading or exercises based on past test results. Gamification, such as earning badges and levels, can be incorporated to keep students motivated and engaged.
Tailored learning platforms can quickly detect lack of engagement, and even suggest ways to address it, allowing teachers to give that student some additional focus, rather than risking them falling behind and getting disheartened.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is an immersive digital representation of a real-world environment, and enables schools to vastly expand the range of educational settings and experiences they can offer students.
VR adds to, rather than replaces, what the school can offer in the real world. For example:
- Field trips – students can ‘visit’ historical sites and museums anywhere in the world.
- STEM – students can take part in experiments in virtual physics, biology and chemistry labs.
- Language learning – students can ‘visit’ other countries and practice conversations in languages other than English.
- Training – vocational students can, for example, carry out mechanical repairs, or construction projects in a safe and lower cost environment.
- Inclusion – students with disabilities can visit places or have experiences that would not be possible for them in the physical world.
The potential for classroom technology
These are exciting times for the merging of technology and teaching, and 2025 seems set to see the expansion of technology in the classroom. Whilst it will need thought, planning and regulation to deliver the best results, there is no doubt that technology has the potential to revolutionise teaching in Australian schools.
