ISTELive 26 and the ASCD Annual Conference wrapped in Orlando a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what we heard from educators and district leaders — and where Boxlight fit into the conversation.
ISTELive 26 and the ASCD Annual Conference co-located in Orlando, Florida from June 28 through July 1, bringing thousands of educators, administrators, and technology leaders together under one roof for the first time. Boxlight spent the week at Booth 2314, and the conversations there tracked closely with what’s showing up in district budgets and RFPs across the country.
Four themes surfaced again and again on the show floor. None of them surprised us — our ecosystem, spanning interactive displays, classroom audio, digital signage, and campus safety, is built for exactly where K–12 is heading.
What We Heard on the Show Floor
Districts are done stitching point solutions together
Technology directors kept describing the same problem from different angles: separate systems for bells, paging, emergency alerts, displays, and signage that don’t talk to each other. Every vendor adds another login, another support contract, and another gap in visibility. The districts furthest along have stopped evaluating point products altogether and started asking vendors to prove their systems work as one platform.
“The most common question at our booth wasn’t ‘what does this device do’ — it was ‘what else does it talk to.’” — Booth 2314 conversations, ISTE 2026
Teacher experience decides whether technology gets used
Session after session came back to adoption, not procurement. A display or platform that teachers find confusing sits idle by October regardless of what it cost. Administrators are now weighing setup time, training load, and day-to-day usability as seriously as feature lists, because those factors predict whether an investment shows up in classroom outcomes a year later.
Safety and communication infrastructure is where the money is moving
Funding conversations centered on emergency notification, campus paging, and visual alerting more than any single instructional tool. District leaders are treating communication infrastructure as foundational — the layer that has to work everywhere on campus, not just in the classroom — and they’re prioritizing it in this year’s technology budgets accordingly.
AI is real, but trust and structure come first
AI showed up in nearly every session title, but the questions from administrators were pointed: how is student data handled, who reviews outputs, and what guardrails exist before a tool reaches a classroom. Interest is genuine. Adoption depends on districts trusting the structure around the tool, not just the tool itself.
One Platform. Every Space.
At Booth 2314, we showed how a single alert can move across campus communication devices, interactive displays, classroom audio, and digital signage without a district juggling separate systems to make it happen. The centerpiece was the Symphonic Series' first show-floor showing, extending the Symphony platform into every room on campus.
SYMPHONY CLOUD District-wide visibility, device health monitoring, and standardized visual alert management across every connected campus. |
SYMPHONY CAMPUS Paging, intercom, bells, and emergency notification managed through a web-based console or existing PBX and SIP/VoIP systems. |
SYMPHONIC SERIES The Symphonic Series puts Symphony audio and two-way intercom in every room over a single PoE cable. Solo covers audio-only spaces; Tempo adds a 12.3-inch clock and messaging display, and Vista adds a large signage panel for visual alerts. |
“Boxlight delivers one ecosystem where campus communication, school safety, interactive displays, classroom audio, digital signage, and instructional software work together.” — Hank Nance, President & COO, Boxlight
Visitors to the booth also got hands-on time with the rest of the ecosystem: Clevertouch Pro Series and IMPACT Lux 2 interactive displays, Boxlight TimeSign digital signage and synchronized clocks, and FrontRow UNITY and ezRoom classroom audio — all part of the same connected platform rather than separate purchases.
Recognition
FOUR TECH & LEARNING BEST OF SHOW AWARDS Symphony and the Symphonic Series were recognized in both the Primary and Secondary Education categories, judged by an independent panel on innovation, reliability, and value for educators. “These solutions highlight the companies that are transforming education through meaningful innovation and practical impact in schools around the world.” — Tech & Learning awards editorial team |
Didn’t Catch Us at Booth 2314?
See how Symphony brings campus communication, safety, and classroom technology onto one platform for your district.
