Featured speaker, FETC 2026 + ISTE 2026 · Working classroom educator since 1990 · Customized for your audience, every time
Teaching has always been hard. Today it’s harder. Students are different. The world is too. And yet, teaching remains a beautiful human art. Teaching takes so much energy! We teachers need a constant infusion of new ideas, inspiration, and encouragement. Especially now, when encouragement seems scarce.
Your teachers and leaders need a speaker who understands all of that. Someone who has been in classrooms across every shift in education and technology, from dial-up to AI, and who still works with real students. Someone who sees educators as the human professionals they are. That’s the speaker I work to be. For your teachers. For your leaders. And for the kids counting on us. I want to help.
Want to hear my voice before you decide? Listen to a Cool Cat Teacher Talk episode · Learn more about my background
Opening keynote, NCTIES.
What Your Teachers Will Walk Away With
Real classroom proof. Not a slide deck about what AI could do. A working framework from a teacher whose AP Computer Science Principles students hit a 100% pass rate using AI as a learning partner (against a 64% national average). FETC put it in the title of my session: “Beyond the AI Hype: Purposeful Pedagogy that Gets Results.”
And this isn’t the first classroom story I’ve brought to the conference stage. Across every era, I’ve shown up with a relevant answer to the question education was asking that year.
Why Your Conference Keeps Getting a Speaker Who’s Still Current
Teachers matter more than ever. But the questions your audience is asking change every few years. Your audience need a speaker who has shown up with a real classroom answer in each era, not just in this one. Here’s the through-line that bookers tell me makes the difference:
🎤 Sessions I Presented at FETC 2026
Sessions I delivered on the FETC 2026 stage. Any can be customized as a keynote, breakout, or workshop for your event.
Beyond the AI Hype: Purposeful Pedagogy that Gets Results
Tired of AI tools that promise everything and deliver frustration? I’ll show you the framework I used to hit a 100% AP CSP pass rate using AI, and how to apply it across grades and subjects. Audiences leave with a pedagogy-first AI implementation plan, not a tools list.
50+ AI/EdTech Tools and Teaching Tips to Transform Your Classroom
Cut through the AI noise. I bring fifty-plus tools that actually work in real classrooms, organized by what teachers want to do: assess, differentiate, give feedback, save time. Every recommendation is one I use Monday through Friday.
Empowering Digital Storytelling: From Pitch to Publish
Digital storytelling is the highest-leverage way I know to integrate writing, media, ethics, and AI into a single project students actually care about. I walk you through the Pitch → Develop → Produce → Publish → Reflect cycle, plus the AI checkpoints that keep students learning instead of cheating.
AI and EdTech SuperShare
A facilitated multi-speaker format I lead at conferences. Three to six expert educators share their best classroom-tested AI moves in rapid rotation. High-energy, audience-driven, and practical. Conferences book this when they want maximum value in a single block.
What Your Audiences Will Actually Take Home
These topics aren’t pulled off a shelf. They’re the questions teachers, leaders, and decision-makers are actually wrestling with right now. Pick a category that fits your audience, or tell me your conference theme and I’ll build the right talk around them. Every session is customized.
💡 AI in Education
- Beyond the AI Hype: Purposeful Pedagogy that Gets Results — the framework behind my 100% AP CSP pass rate
- Making AI Work for You (Not Against You) — practical AI for the busy teacher
- How to Use AI to Improve Learning, Not Undermine It — keeping the rigor, gaining the leverage
- Steps for Effective Prompting and Iteration with AI — the skill students need most
- 50+ AI/EdTech Tools and Teaching Tips to Transform Your Classroom
🩺 AI in Healthcare & Workforce Education
- Preparing Educators and Employers to Thrive in a World of AI — the keynote I delivered at Mercer University in 2025. Built for healthcare educators, employers, and workforce-development audiences. Practical, non-technical, with classroom-tested examples that translate to industry.
- AI and the Workforce: What Local Organizations Need to Know About AI Today — the civic version. For chambers of commerce, business associations, healthcare networks, and nonprofits.
🛠️ EdTech & Future-Ready Classrooms
- How to Help Students Become Future-Ready — the practical skills and tools (without the fluff). Built for school district opening days.
- 12 Habits of Top 21st-Century Educators — what to change, how to change it, and how to keep the mindset that protects you and serves students
- How to Be a 21st-Century Influencer — practical ways to influence positive change in your school. Motivational keynote.
- Technology-Driven Differentiated Instruction — using podcasts, video, YouTube, blogs, and AI to reach every learner
🌍 Project-Based Learning & Global Collaboration
- Gold Standard Project-Based Learning That Reaches Every Student — the PBL framework I use to engage every learner, including students who typically check out. Based on my classroom and on the research from PBLWorks. Sessions can be tailored for elementary, middle, or high school audiences.
- 7 Steps to Connect Your Classroom — best practices that landed me in Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat
- 7 Steps to Flatten Your Classroom — global collaboration one step at a time, based on my Pearson book
- Empowering Digital Storytelling: From Pitch to Publish — the project-based framework I run with my own students
🛡️ Classroom Resilience & Crisis Pivots
- How We Moved to Online Learning Without Losing a Single Instructional Day — and Kept Test Scores Strong — the question districts kept asking me to walk them through after 2020. The framework, the tools, the pedagogy, and the human pieces that made the difference. Highly relevant beyond the pandemic — every district faces unexpected disruptions.
✏️ Writing, Digital Citizenship & Online Engagement
- Reinventing Writing — based on my Routledge book of the same name. Collaborative writing, peer feedback, and AI-assisted revision. Frequently requested by ELA conferences and writing-focused districts.
- Enlightened Digital Citizenship — what students actually need to know to navigate AI, social media, and online life with wisdom. A K–12-tested framework based on what’s working in my classroom right now.
- Simple Online Presenting — practical session on how to teach and present online effectively. Built from hundreds of hours connecting students and audiences across continents. Includes the skills students must master themselves.
- Blogging for a Better Classroom — engaging student writers through audience-driven peer review
- Common Core Writing in the Cloud — collaborative content creation aligned to standards
💛 Teacher Excellence & Wellness
- Innovate Like a Turtle — my signature keynote on sustainable, non-burnout innovation. Small consistent steps over a long enough timeline beats heroic overload every time. Built for teacher conferences and school district opening days where audiences are tired of being told to keep up by working harder.
- 12 Habits of Top 21st-Century Educators — practical change starting with mindset. What to change, how to change it, and how to keep the mindset that protects you and serves students.
- How to Be a 21st-Century Influencer — motivational opener built for teacher conferences
- From Dial-Up to AI: How an Everyday Teacher Keeps Up With Innovation — the question I’m asked most often: “How do you keep up with innovation all these years?” This is the answer. An autobiographical keynote tracing my path from teaching dial-up internet in the 1990s through Web 2.0, social media, mobile, and now AI. The takeaway any audience can use: how to keep learning when the ground keeps shifting. Strong fit for teacher conferences, school openers, and civic events.
🎉 Audience Participation, SuperShare & Live Recordings
- Smackdown / SuperShare / Speed Sharing — facilitated multi-speaker rotation formats I lead. Three to six expert educators (or willing audience members) share their best classroom-tested moves in rapid rotation. High-energy, audience-driven, practical. I co-created the Smackdown format at ISTE 2008 and lead the AI & EdTech SuperShare at conferences today.
- Live Podcast Recording with Audience Participation — sometimes I record an episode of Cool Cat Teacher Talk with a live audience as part of an event, interviewing a local educator on stage. Audiences love it, and it doubles as content your district takes home.
- Hired as Panel Moderator — I’m regularly hired by EdTech companies and conferences to moderate panels and webinars. Recent: Lego Education at ISTE 2024. Available for live and virtual moderation gigs.
- 50+ Ways to Improve Your Classroom with Technology — high-energy crowd-pleaser
🍽️ After-Dinner, Civic & Local Organization Events
- From Dial-Up to AI: An Everyday Teacher’s Story of Adapting — 20-minute story keynote. Civic-friendly, non-technical, organization-agnostic. From teaching the internet in the dial-up days through every shift since, this is the story of how one teacher kept learning, kept teaching, and kept up — and what any organization can take from it. Popular with Rotary Clubs, Chamber of Commerce banquets, and business groups.
- AI and the Workforce: What Local Organizations Need to Know About AI Today — practical, non-technical look at how AI is changing how we work, hire, and learn. Built for healthcare organizations, business associations, civic clubs, and local nonprofits. Recently delivered as a healthcare keynote at Mercer University, 2025.
Formats Built to Fit Your Event
Every format flexes around your audience and your goals. Here are the most common ways your conference, district, or organization can put a session to work:
🎤 Opening Keynote
45–60 min. The big moment that sets the tone for your event. Customized to your audience and what’s happening in my classroom that week.
🔦 Spotlight Session
45–60 min. Deeper dive on one topic. Strong fit for breakout slots and concurrent sessions.
🛠️ Workshop
60–90 min, hands-on. Participants leave with something they built or planned during the session.
🏫 School-Opener PD
Half-day or full-day for districts. Designed for the first day or two before students arrive.
💻 Virtual Keynote / Webinar
Same content, online. I’ve presented online for hundreds of hours and know how to keep remote audiences engaged.
🎉 Audience Participation Format
Smackdown, SuperShare, or Speed Sharing. High-energy, audience-driven multi-speaker formats for when you want maximum engagement and shareable moments.
🍽️ After-Dinner Address
20 min. For banquets, civic events, Rotary, Chamber of Commerce.
🎙️ Live Podcast Recording
Sometimes I record a podcast with a live audience as part of an event, interviewing a local educator on stage. A unique format that doubles as content for your district.
Every Keynote, Customized for Your People
This is what bookers, conference organizers, and district leaders tell me their teachers and audiences need most. It’s what I work to deliver every time:
- Built for your audience. I research your conference, your district, your attendee mix, and the conversations your educators are having right now. The keynote is shaped around them, not pulled off a shelf.
- Grounded in current classroom reality. The day before your event, I’m teaching. I bring in what just happened with my own teenagers: what worked, what blew up, what I’d do differently.
- Research-backed, classroom-tested. Every claim has a source. My content is built for educators who can spot fluff a mile away.
- Practical takeaways your audience will actually use. Tools, frameworks, scripts, exact prompts. Not just inspiration.
- Relevant on every stage. I’ve presented keynotes for thousands, workshops for hundreds, civic groups and leadership teams, in person to fully virtual. I’m committed to real-life connections to remarkable people and their work, wherever I’m blessed to share.
- Sometimes I bring my students. When the venue and timing fit, I’ve taken small groups of my students to share their own work alongside mine. Audiences remember it.
🌍 Selected Speaking History
More than 100 speaking engagements over 20 years, spoken in 10+ countries across 4 continents. Keynotes, featured sessions, judging, moderating, virtual events, universities, corporations, government round tables, international conferences, and U.S. school district opening days. A representative selection follows. Full speaking history available on request.
🌟 Recent & Featured
- FETC 2026 — Featured Speaker
- ISTE 2026 — Featured Speaker
- Mercer University Healthcare Keynote — 2025 (“Preparing Educators and Employers to Thrive in a World of AI”)
- Ithra Sync Digital Wellbeing Summit — Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 2024. International summit themed “In Pursuit of Digital Truth,” convening researchers, entrepreneurs, government officials, and global thought leaders.
- ISTE 2024 — Denver
- Lego Education at ISTE 2024 — moderator (paid panel host)
- The Baptist University of Florida — 2024
- Heritage Christian Academy — Indianapolis IN, 2024 (district keynote)
- Albany State University (Darton Foundation) — AI Explained Simply, 2024
🎯 Companies Who Have Sought My Early Product Feedback
Many EdTech companies and foundations bring me in privately for early feedback on their products and direction, because I’m a working educator who can tell them what classrooms actually need:
- Gates Foundation — private roundtable, 2015
- Microsoft
- Canva
If your company would benefit from direct classroom input, paid consulting and product advisory engagements available on request.
🎬 Events I’ve Attended as Media, Writer, or Editorial Press
In addition to speaking, I’m regularly invited to attend major education events as press, covering them for the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, podcast, and broader education media community:
- ISTE — multiple years as media (in addition to my speaker engagements)
- Global Education and Skills Forum, Dubai — media, 2015
- Edutopia Teacher Conference — attended as a writer for Edutopia
- Microsoft Global Conference, South Africa — media, 2010
If you’re hosting a major education event and want a working educator to cover it across podcast, blog, and social, let’s talk.
🎓 Universities & Corporate Stages
🇺🇸 U.S. Major Education Conferences
🌐 International
🏫 U.S. School Districts, Institutes & Civic Events
💻 Virtual & Online Conferences
During 2020–2023 I delivered many keynotes virtually, including for the Wyoming district keynote (2020), Indianapolis Indiana 2020, and other school district innovation webinars across the U.S.
I’m a contributing writer at Edutopia and have been featured in USA Today, LA Times, EdTech Magazine, and Intelligent Enterprise Leaders Alliance. Full media kit available on request.
📊 Browse Sample Presentations
Want to see how I structure a session before you book? Many of my keynotes and workshops are archived as webinars and slide decks:
Booking Questions, Answered
How do I book Vicki Davis to keynote my conference?
Submit a booking inquiry through the Cool Cat Teacher booking form. You’ll be asked for your event date, audience size, format, and budget range. I respond within a few business days. If we’re a fit, I’ll send a custom proposal.
What does Vicki Davis speak about?
My most-requested topics in 2026 are AI in K–12 education, EdTech for future-ready classrooms, project-based learning, global collaboration, digital storytelling, and teacher excellence. I’m currently presenting at FETC 2026 on “Beyond the AI Hype: Purposeful Pedagogy that Gets Results,” “50+ AI/EdTech Tools and Teaching Tips,” and “Empowering Digital Storytelling: From Pitch to Publish.”
What are your speaking fees?
Fees vary based on format, length, location (in-person versus virtual), travel requirements, and scope. I’m happy to provide current rates and a custom proposal once I understand your event. Submit a booking inquiry and I’ll send a tailored quote within a few business days.
How far in advance should I book?
Six to twelve months out is ideal, especially for conference keynotes that anchor your program. Three months is sometimes possible, but rarely. Strong dates fill quickly. The earlier you reach out, the more I can shape the talk around exactly what your audience needs.
Do you customize keynotes for our specific audience?
Yes. Every keynote I deliver is customized based on (1) a deep read of your audience and (2) what is going on in classrooms right now. I’ll ask for your conference theme, attendee profile, and any internal context that should shape the talk.
Do you speak virtually?
Yes. I’ve presented online for hundreds of hours and have a built-out home studio for high-quality remote keynotes and workshops. I can also do hybrid: live-streamed in to remote audiences from my own classroom or your event venue.
What audiences do you speak to?
Classroom teachers, instructional coaches, IT directors, administrators, district leaders, school board members, college students preparing for teaching careers, and civic groups (Rotary, Chamber of Commerce) on technology and education topics.
Can you speak internationally?
Yes. I’ve spoken in Russia, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, India, and many U.S. states, plus virtual events across six continents.
Ready to Talk About Your Event?
Tell me your conference dates, audience, and format. I’ll send a custom proposal within a few business days.
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