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After an intense but enriching week and after a break that coincided with a long weekend, I can now put my thoughts in a bit of order to reflect on all I learned at the IFE Conference 2025, which took place last week.
Rereading my notes, I am trying to decipher what I wrote hurriedly at conferences – those words I quickly jotted down when hearing or reading something in a presentation. I try to remember colleagues’ conversations between one talk and another, at the lunch table or in informal discussions in the coffee line. I want to highlight and share two points from the many that grabbed my attention during those three days.
On the first day, at the inaugural keynote entitled Artificial Intelligence in Education – Hype vs. Reality, Michael Fung, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future of Education (IFE), and Paulo Blikstein, Director of the IFE Research Lab, spoke about the hype behind Artificial Intelligence (AI), all those exaggerated expectations published in many media and that, sometimes, we hear from our colleagues: Whether AI is going to replace us, whether robots or virtual assistants will do a better job than teachers, whether artificial intelligence is going to be the great equalizer that will democratize access to technology, among many other speculations about AI. This speaker duo did an excellent job presenting a grounded vision of what AI can do, its limitations, and its consequences.
I highlighted in my notes a term that Paulo Blikstein mentioned, which has stuck with me: “Amara’s Law,” which basically states: “We tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate its long-term effects.”
Although it was the first time I had attended a conference that mentioned this law, I am very familiar with it and the warning not to get carried away by the hype and high expectations usually accompanying the launch of new technology or a product that will “revolutionize education” or “forever change the way we learn.” I am an assiduous reader of Audrey Watters, the “EdTech’s Cassandra,” and I often remember her wise words: “The best way to predict the future is to issue a press release.” Thus, when I hear hyped phrases like those above, I receive them cautiously and skeptically.
I connected strongly with this conference precisely because it warned all the attendees: Do not be carried away by these exaggerated expectations nor be convinced that AI is about to replace teachers. In the words of Paulo Blikstein, “They do not understand the work of teaching […] they simplify what they do every day in the classroom.”
This brings me to the second point I want to share today, closely related to the first.
This year, for the first time, I attended the IFE Conference (formerly CIIE) as a speaker. In all its past editions, I always participated as staff, a press member, or a participant. But in this eleventh conference, I had the honor of being on the panel “Educational Innovation Trends in Higher Education: Four Perspectives,” in which I shared ideas and reflections with my colleagues Liz Reisberg, María Teresa González Carrasco, Guillem Garcia Brustenga, and Esteban Venegas Villanueva. In this panel, of course, we talked about educational trends and, above all, the problems we observe in the educational community.
Here is where I want to highlight Liz Reisberg’s comment: “[Today] we expect a lot from teachers.” We have high expectations regarding what a teacher should currently do. “[Innovating] is an immense burden,” resulting in a very stressed and frustrated teaching staff. Mental health problems, as mentioned often in The Observatory, are increasingly frequent in universities and academia. For this reason, in one of her interventions, Liz recommended, “[Universities] must change their relationship with teachers, supporting them more” because (this is where I link with the first point) the work of teaching at any educational level, especially the university level, is not easy. However, from the external perspective of those of us who are not in front of the classroom every day, it may seem easy; we make the mistake of simplifying the teaching work.
“[Nowadays], we expect a lot from teachers” – Liz Reisberg
For this reason, it is crucial to take the time to attend conferences, meetings, and symposia and create networks (formal and informal) internally and externally. It is also necessary to facilitate listening and conversation opportunities at these events to exchange ideas and projects, share good and bad experiences, describe what worked and did not work, and provide spaces where teachers can confidently express their complaints and concerns.
Although it was a very intense and exhausting week, I left the event, as usual, with many ideas, renewed enthusiasm, many notes, and a desire to share all my reflections so that they do not become isolated notebook paragraphs or ideas.
Here, I only shared two outstanding notes, which stuck with me from those three days of experience exchanges, but I would love to read them to you. If you had the opportunity to attend this year’s IFE Conference in person or virtually, tell me your reflections, the ideas came away with, and which conferences or panels stimulated your thinking.
If you could not attend, here is the link where you can see all the keynote speeches: https://live.tec.mx/ifeconference
Finally, I extend much appreciation to all the people who came to greet me, those who told me that they read us every week, that they do not miss the newsletter, and that they always look forward to our publications. They made my day (week!) and motivated me to continue doing what we have been doing at The Observatory for more than a decade.
I hope to see you next year!
Karina Fuerte
Editor in Chief, Observatory IFE.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
