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Named Toddle 2026 Top 100 School Innovators
Futurise Edu

The world changed.What should school prepare students for now?

The question facing schools isn’t simply how to use AI.

What do students need to become better at because AI exists?

Futurise Edu helps schools answer that question, and turn the answer into learning experiences where students think deeply, make meaningful decisions, and use powerful tools without outsourcing the thinking that matters.

Futurise Edu illustration: a student's silhouette in profile with a heart inside a brain, encircled by the six areas of the work: teacher professional learning, learning and assessment redesign, the Human Standards Framework, student learning labs, family communication, and AI guidance for schools

The thinking belongs to the student.

Mildly Disruptive Ideas About School

Five questions we're asking (and answering).

They move from AI use to the purpose of school.

01AI Use

Maybe the question isn't whether students used AI.

Maybe it's whether the thinking stayed with the student.

02Learning Design

Maybe the goal isn't to AI-proof assignments.

Maybe it's to design learning students don't want to outsource.

03Evidence of Learning

Maybe the product isn't proof of learning anymore.

Maybe the evidence is in the process.

04Student Capability

Maybe “How should students use AI?” isn't the biggest question.

Maybe it's “What do we want students to become capable of?”

05The Purpose of School

Maybe the future of school isn't less human.

Maybe it's more.

01The Shift

AI changed the evidence. It didn't change the purpose of learning.

For decades, schools have relied heavily on what students produce as evidence of what they know:

An essay

A presentation

A research report

A solution

Now AI can produce many of those things in seconds.

That creates a bigger challenge than detecting AI use or writing a better AI policy:

If the product is no longer reliable evidence of learning, what are we actually trying to develop, and how do we make it visible?

We believe the answer starts with the human.

02Human at the Core

What are we developing?

The Futurise Human Standards™ name the ten capabilities that become more, not less, important in an AI-shaped world.

Human FlourishingUnderstand Self

Ten standards. One throughline.

Human Flourishing

Human Thinking

Human Expression

Human Growth

Running through all ten

Use Tools Responsibly

It is not an eleventh standard. It is the throughline that runs across every one of them.

Not Can AI do this?

But:

What thinking should the student own?

Where can a tool deepen that thinking?

Where might it begin to replace it?

03The False Choice

Move beyond “AI or no AI.”

Schools are often handed a choice between two extremes. Neither one asks the question that matters.

Option A

Keep AI out of learning.

Option B

Teach everyone to use it.

Futurise helps schools ask better questions.

  1. 01

    Where does AI remove a barrier, and where does it remove the thinking?

  2. 02

    When should students struggle productively?

  3. 03

    What evidence actually shows us how a student is thinking?

  4. 04

    How can assessment capture reasoning, reflection, decision-making, and growth, not just the final product?

  5. 05

    How do we prepare students for powerful tools without making those tools the center of their education?

Futurise gives educators practical frameworks for making those decisions.

04How We Work

From big questions to classroom practice

Schools don't need another presentation about the future of AI. They need ways to design for it.

What students develop

Human Standards™

A framework for identifying the human capacities students need to develop in an AI-shaped world.

What are we developing?

How we design learning

The HUMAN Framework™

Five design moves that keep assessment focused on how students think, not only what they turn in.

  • HHonor Student Voice
  • UUse Authentic Audiences
  • MMake Thinking Visible
  • AActivate Collaboration
  • NNavigate AI Intentionally

Where AI fits

AI + Thinking Tools

Practical tools for deciding when AI supports learning, and when it begins to replace it.

  • AI Thinking Cycle
  • AI Spotter Method
  • POWER Lens
05Our Work

What we do

Professional Learning

Professional Learning

Workshops and professional learning that move beyond AI tools into learning, assessment, student thinking, agency, and intentional AI use.

Learn more

Partnerships

School & District Partnerships

Customized work with leadership teams and educators around assessment redesign, learning design, AI strategy, faculty learning, curriculum, and implementation.

Learn more

Course

Teaching for Thinking in the Age of AI

A professional learning course where teachers bring a real assignment and leave with a redesigned learning experience they can actually use.

Learn more

Students

Human Impact Lab™

Student-facing, real-world problem solving where young people investigate meaningful problems, understand stakeholders, develop and test solutions, collaborate, revise, and create something that could make a difference.

Learn more
06Who We Are

It began with students, not technology.

If AI can increasingly produce the things schools have traditionally asked students to produce, what becomes more important for students to learn how to do themselves?

Futurise Edu was founded by Julia Ewart and Rachel Lugo, two educators who kept returning to the same question, and who bring decades of work with students and teachers to it.

Their work brings together:

  • Classroom teaching
  • Learning design
  • Instructional technology
  • Neurodiversity
  • Executive function
  • Inquiry
  • Assessment
  • Research

The work isn’t to preserve school exactly as it was.

It’s to get much clearer about what school is for.

Julia Ewart

Co-Founder

Rachel Lugo

Co-Founder

Where You’ll Find Us

Anywhere educators are asking bigger questions about what learning should become.

  • Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
    Presented at
  • AIMS, Association of Independent Maryland & DC Schools
    Presented at
  • SITE, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education
    Presented at
  • Pulitzer Center
    AI Teacher Advisory Council
  • Toddle
    2026 School Innovators

What if AI made us better at designing for humans?

The future of education isn’t about competing with artificial intelligence.

It’s about becoming much more intentional about what we want humans to be able to do.

  • To question.
  • To discern.
  • To understand other people.
  • To make meaning.
  • To create with intention.
  • To communicate something worth saying.
  • To reflect, adapt, and keep learning.
  • And to know when a tool is helping them think, and when it is doing the thinking for them.

The thinking belongs to the student.

Let’s design learning that keeps it there.