The results are here! After receiving 46,943 community votes on this year’s PanelPicker® submissions, we are thrilled to announce 161 community-selected sessions for SXSW EDU 2027.
Spanning all 12 tracks, this year’s submissions were led by Teaching & Learning, Work Reimagined, and Health & Wellbeing.
The trends within PanelPicker explored how education and workforce systems are evolving amid AI adoption, shifting economic realities, and calls to prepare students with durable human skills. Proposals highlighted strategies for navigating new technology policies and bans, including how edtech can respond to growing demands for measurable impact and how policymakers can craft policies that work for educators, students, and families. They also spotlight regional success stories and community-driven solutions that offer scalable models for addressing critical challenges, and building creative-industry talent pipelines.
Plus, explore two Special Programs highlighting innovative approaches to lifelong learning and the practical application of AI to solve challenges in education.
Dive into the full announcement and start bookmarking your favorites in the SXSW EDU Schedule.
- Belonging by Design: Native Student Wellbeing (Health & Wellbeing)
- Beyond Busing: School Segregation in the New Era (Policy & Advocacy)
- Black–Jewish Pluralism: Advancing Relational Civic Learning (Teaching & Learning)
- Fight It in Court or Fight It in the Catalog (Policy & Advocacy)
- Fight Misinformation by Arming Students with Metacognition (Health & Wellbeing)
- Growing the Next Generation of Climate Leaders (International Exchange)
- Learnings From Student Chat Data: The Black Box of AI (Teaching & Learning)
- Nothing to Dread: Reclaiming Teenhood as an Opportunity (Health & Wellbeing)
- Registered Apprenticeships Meet Community College AI (Work Reimagined)
- Solving the Nature Gap: Learning Outdoors for Everyone (Community Initiatives)
- Students Left Behind: AI’s Shock to Higher Ed Accommodation (Accessibility Solutions)
- The Invisible Technology That Builds Every Brain (Health & Wellbeing)
- The Weight We Carry: When Leadership Meets Loss (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Wired for Connection? AI Intimacy & Student Wellbeing (Health & Wellbeing)
- 3rd Explore Brazilian Community Meetup @ SXSW EDU (International Exchange)
- Beyond the CEO: Building a Constellation of Thought Leaders (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Beyond the Math: The Communication Work Behind Real Progress (Policy & Advocacy)
- Building Community Care: Revolutionizing Educator Wellbeing (Health & Wellbeing)
- Building the Village (Community Initiatives)
- Countering Self-Censorship & Reclaiming Reading Joy (Community Initiatives)
- Cultivating Community: A Meetup for Educators of Color (Equity & Belonging)
- ECE Stories That Move Us: A Fieldwide Conversation (Teaching & Learning)
- Gotham EDU Conversations & Connections Meetup (Arts & Culture)
- Health Moonshot Meetup: Gathering of Impact Makers (Health & Wellbeing)
- Let’s Talk Teaching Abroad: Building Our Global Community (International Exchange)
- LGBTQ+ & Friends Meetup (Equity & Belonging)
- Literacy Leaders & Book Fair Coordinators Meetup (Teaching & Learning)
- Plate to Planet: A Cross-Sector Meetup for Climate Education (Community Initiatives)
- Salaam & Solidarity: Muslim Belonging in Learning Spaces (Community Initiatives)
- Still Called, Just Differently: Black Women Reimagining (Work Reimagined)
- What About Us? Neurodivergent Educator Meetup (Accessibility Solutions)
- <10k, 100K, 1M+ Scale & Evidence Decisions & Trade-offs (Startups & Investment)
- A Community Committed to Every Learner (Community Initiatives)
- AI Through a Child Development Lens (Future of Tech)
- Are Public Schools Losing the Public? (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Beyond the Ban: Building for Attention in the Age of AI (Teaching & Learning)
- Beyond the Scholarship: Rethinking Student Financial Aid (Startups & Investment)
- Career Changers to Classroom Leaders: A New Teacher Pipeline (Work Reimagined)
- DACAmented Educators & Representation in US Public Schools (Policy & Advocacy)
- Districts Are Buying AI They Can’t Evaluate: Here’s the Fix (Future of Tech)
- Edutainment: Shaping Complex Topics Into Compelling Stories (Arts & Culture)
- Free Learning Online vs. Social Media Bans: Who’s at Risk (International Exchange)
- Frenemies: A Debate Among Colleagues on Strategic Staffing (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Global Students Have Choices. Can US Universities Keep Up? (International Exchange)
- How Black Educators Are Pioneering the Future of Learning (Teaching & Learning)
- How to Fund Childcare When Nobody’s Coming to Help (Policy & Advocacy)
- Joy Rebels: LGBTQ+ Youth Making Change (Equity & Belonging)
- Less Screentime, More Learning: Human Centered AI (Future of Tech)
- Making Work-Based Learning Accessible Through the Curriculum (Work Reimagined)
- Modern Book Fairs: Advancing Student Literacy & Belonging (Community Initiatives)
- Museums as Community Education Hubs (Community Initiatives)
- Neurodiversity-First EdTech Design (Accessibility Solutions)
- Open Slots, Long Waitlists: Scaling Early Childhood Benefits (Startups & Investment)
- Radical Care as a Leadership Strategy (Equity & Belonging)
- Read, Talk, Count: The Family Learning Equation (Community Initiatives)
- Rediscovering Kindergarten: Rejecting the False Choice (Teaching & Learning)
- Refugee Education: Building Systems for Student Success (International Exchange)
- Reimaging Youth-Led Spaces: Research, Policy, & More (Community Initiatives)
- Rooted in Wonder: Digital Thriving Inspired by Fred Rogers (Health & Wellbeing)
- Silicon vs. Soul: Resisting the Algorithmic Classroom (Teaching & Learning)
- Supporting Caregivers to Build Math & Science Confidence (Community Initiatives)
- Tales from the Middle: Better Stories for Adolescents (Arts & Culture)
- The Brain Economy Goes to Business School (Work Reimagined)
- The Missing Infrastructure Around Public Schools (Community Initiatives)
- The New Higher Ed Data Frontier (Policy & Advocacy)
- The Next Longevity Lab Is on College Campuses (Community Initiatives)
- The Other Literacy: Is Movement as Important as Reading? (Health & Wellbeing)
- The Science of Peer Support (Health & Wellbeing)
- Think Like a Journalist: Building Civic Resilience (Policy & Advocacy)
- What Can Universities Learn from Microcolleges? (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- What If a University Built a City? (Community Initiatives)
- When Students Cause Harm: Accountability, Repair, & Justice (Equity & Belonging)
- Who Will Raise Our Children: The Village or the Algorithm? (Health & Wellbeing)
- Your Story Our Story: Family History as a Lens on US History (Arts & Culture)
- Amigues Presente: Reclaiming Language, Identity, & Belonging (Arts & Culture)
- Basketball Trafficking: Race, Education, & Migration (Equity & Belonging)
- Clear Paths, Real Opportunity (Work Reimagined)
- The History of the Future of Learning (Community Initiatives)
- Trending in Ed: March Madness of Learning Trends 2027 (Future of Tech)
- Who’s Actually Anxious? A Dialogue with Gen Z (Health & Wellbeing)
- A Seat at the Table Isn’t the Same as a Vote (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Accessibility Already Built the Future of Learning (Accessibility Solutions)
- An Experiential Answer to the AI Entry-Level Job Crunch (Startups & Investment)
- ASL Has a Marketing Problem. Games Are Fixing It. (Accessibility Solutions)
- Beyond Art Skills: Building Creative Confidence for Life (Arts & Culture)
- Beyond Prompting: Teaching Humans in an AI World (Future of Tech)
- Beyond Self-Care: Rethinking Educator Burnout (Health & Wellbeing)
- Beyond the Classroom: Building a Culture of Civic Engagement (Policy & Advocacy)
- Designing AI for Every Learner: An Autism Center Story (Accessibility Solutions)
- Emotional Attunement: The Skill Nobody Taught Us (Health & Wellbeing)
- Figma Games to Sticker Packs: Gamifying Orientation (Teaching & Learning)
- How Birds Fix Our Attention Crisis (Health & Wellbeing)
- How Positive Media Built Mental Health in 1,000 Classrooms (Health & Wellbeing)
- If Teachers Won’t Use It, It Doesn’t Work (Teaching & Learning)
- May the Forest Be with You: Biophilic Design in Education (Health & Wellbeing)
- Mini-Authors: Teens Turn Kids’ Doodles into Published Books (Community Initiatives)
- No Such Thing as a Neutral School Leader (Equity & Belonging)
- One More Question: That’s All It Would Have Taken (Startups & Investment)
- Online TTRPGs as Real-Life Social Learning for Youth (Health & Wellbeing)
- Open Admissions, Accessible by Design: A Title II Primer (Accessibility Solutions)
- Protecting Creative Confidence from Prompt Culture (Arts & Culture)
- Reading Is Physical Too, Let’s Start Treating It That Way! (Teaching & Learning)
- Relational Intelligence (RQ): Relational Future in the AI Era (Health & Wellbeing)
- Student Creator Programs That Drive Workforce Outcomes (Work Reimagined)
- Teaching During Polycrisis: Beyond Burnout, Toward Capacity (Health & Wellbeing)
- Teaching Is a Trade: Apprenticeship Rebuilds the Pipeline (Work Reimagined)
- Teaching the Next Generation to Build Trustworthy Tech (Future of Tech)
- Teens, Metacognition, & ChatGPT: Early Lessons from Estonia (International Exchange)
- Ten Years From Now: What If We Got Early Childhood Right? (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- The Broken Promise of the Net Price Calculator (Policy & Advocacy)
- The Engagement Trap: Why EdTech Metrics Lie (Future of Tech)
- The Invisible Playground: Teaching Kids to Spot the Hook (Health & Wellbeing)
- The Job We Keep Asking Principals to Do No Longer Exists (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- The New Role of the Science Museum (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- The People Are the Strategy (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Training Has 24 Months to Prove Its Impact (Work Reimagined)
- What a Disinformation Crisis Taught Me About Teaching (International Exchange)
- What Are We Missing? Coaching Neurodivergent Athletes (Accessibility Solutions)
- Who Evaluates AI? Building Better Learning with Evidence (Future of Tech)
- You Learned the Job. Now Learn to Lead. (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- 2027 Central Texas Lifelong Learning Awards Ceremony (Community Initiatives)
- From Problem to Prototype: Build AI Tools for Your School (Teaching & Learning)
- 2045 Classroom Artifacts: Can AI Retain Productive Struggle? (Future of Tech)
- A Framework for Teaching AI When You Don’t Know How to Code (Future of Tech)
- A Human-Centered Rubric for Choosing AI Tools (Health & Wellbeing)
- Academic Depth, Market Speed: Can Universities Do Both? (Work Reimagined)
- AI Didn’t Break School. It Revealed the Pivot (Teaching & Learning)
- AI Flash Lab: A Live Experiment in Human + AI (Future of Tech)
- Algorithmic Anxiety: Deprogramming Influencer Culture (Health & Wellbeing)
- Before Burnout: Building Trust to Retain Educators (Health & Wellbeing)
- Beyond the Building: A New Lens for Learner Ecosystem (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Bring a Problem, Leave with a Prototype: A Live Incubator (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Bring Them Back: Designing Pathways for Comebackers (Work Reimagined)
- Bringing the Band OK Go & Project Management to Youth (Teaching & Learning)
- Building Learning Community in Online & HyFlex Courses (Future of Tech)
- Co-Design Works! The Design Brief Came from a Refugee Camp (Community Initiatives)
- Crafting the Gift: Live Storytelling for Inclusive Pedagogy (Equity & Belonging)
- Dance to Read: Embodied Phonics for K-2 Classrooms (Teaching & Learning)
- Embracing Not Knowing: Navigating Career Uncertainty (Work Reimagined)
- Enter the Cypher: Hip-Hop, Liberation, & Multimodal Learning (Arts & Culture)
- Exploring Identity, Community, & Resistance Through Art (Arts & Culture)
- Getting Districts Unstuck: A Case Study Lab (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Hack the Nervous System: Real SEL for Secondary Staff (Health & Wellbeing)
- How We Built a Scale Hackable City: & You Can Too (Teaching & Learning)
- Leading with HEART: Bridging the Margins with Families (Equity & Belonging)
- Life Skills in Plain Sight: Navigating the Hidden Curriculum (Equity & Belonging)
- Monsters of Appalachia: A Playable Learning Ecosystem (Community Initiatives)
- Preserving Conditions for Creativity in the Age of AI (Arts & Culture)
- Reframing Music Education for Today’s Industry (Work Reimagined)
- Teach It Like You Stream It: Broadcast Teaching for $0 (Teaching & Learning)
- The Accidental Incubator: Redesigning Study Abroad (International Exchange)
- The Art of Expansion: Strategies for Scaling Program Impact (Arts & Culture)
- The Forbidden Subject: Using AI & Emotions to Access in Math (Teaching & Learning)
- The Future of Civic Dialogue: Rethinking Campus Culture (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- The Imagineering Effect: A School Design Workshop (Teaching & Learning)
- The Medium Is the Sample: Authorship in the AI Age (Arts & Culture)
- The Pixel, Post-It, & Confessional: Next-Gen Evaluation (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Why Teenagers Need Audiences, Not Just Assignments (Arts & Culture)
- Your System in 2036: A Hands-On Futures Workshop (Leadership for Tomorrow)
- Youth Cartography: Mapping Safe Spaces for Youth, by Youth (Arts & Culture)
Catch these speakers, as well as the recently announced Keynote and Featured speakers in Austin, Texas March 13-16, 2027. Buy your badge by 11:59pm PT on Thursday, October 29 to save $250 off the walk-up rate.
SXSW EDU 2027 Speaker photos (left to right in order of appearance): Vanessa Bennett, Pedro Noguera, Christina Greer, Andy Brown, Frederic Bertley, Michelle Kang, Lori Shapiro
