Who’s Influencing K-12 Buying? Trusted Educators Are Shaping the Conversation

When Vicki Davis considers whether to recommend an education technology product, she doesn’t start with its marketing materials. She starts by testing it with students.

Davis has almost 300,000 followers across 11 social platforms and almost 1 million weekly listeners and viewers across radio and television. While she’s the creator of the Cool Cat Teacher blog and the 10-Minute Teacher podcast, she’s also a longtime educator and instructional technology coach, and she regularly fields pitches from companies hoping to reach her audience.

But before agreeing to promote a product, she wants to see whether it works in a real classroom, understand its research and privacy protections, and determine whether it addresses a problem educators actually face.

“I test it with kids,” she said, “and I have my teacher friends test it with their kids.”

Education companies are increasingly interested in teachers who create content, share resources, and make recommendations to their peers. These educators can offer something traditional marketing often struggles to deliver – a perspective grounded in a real person and real classroom experience.

But their influence is more complicated than a social media post or sponsored podcast episode might suggest. A teacher’s recommendation can prompt colleagues to try a tool or help a product gain traction within a school. It can also introduce a company to educators who might otherwise never encounter it.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the teacher can influence school district purchasing decisions, or that an online audience will translate into sales.

For K-12 vendors, understanding that distinction is becoming increasingly important as schools face crowded technology markets, tighter budgets, and growing scrutiny of products.

How Educators Discover New Products

Teachers have more ways than ever to learn about education technology. They can discover products everywhere from social media videos and podcasts, to professional learning communities, conferences, and recommendations from peers.

But the underlying dynamic remains constant. Educators often look to people they trust to help them decide what is worth their time, sources said.

Christopher Nesi, a high school social studies teacher, podcast host, and instructor at Rutgers University’s School of Communication, said teachers’ discovery of new products often begins with word-of-mouth recommendations from people whose judgment they respect.

Nesi has built an audience through his House of #EdTech podcast, which he launched in 2014 and says has surpassed 2 million downloads. He sees content creators as one part of a broader network through which educators learn about new tools.

“I’ve never decided to use, or fallen in love with, a tool because the vendor sold me on it,” he said. “It’s the people you know, like, and trust.”

Educators want to hear from people who have used a product and can explain what it does, how it fits into classroom practice, and whether it solves a genuine problem, he said.

Davis sees a similar pattern. Teachers are busy, and many rely on a relatively small number of trusted newsletters, websites, and other sources for ideas. They often don’t have time to seek out every new product themselves, she said.

That makes the people who filter and share information especially important, she said. Davis distinguishes between prominent creators who regularly publish content and what she calls the “worker bees” inside schools, or the educators who collect useful resources and pass them along to colleagues.

Those informal influencers may have lower public profiles, but their recommendations can travel directly through a school.

“You have these people who bring in the speakers, who bring in the new tech tool, who bring in the new pedagogy, who pilot the new program,” Davis said. “Those are the people who make the decisions, and those are the people you want to influence.”

Influence is not limited to the educators with the largest social media followings, she said. A creator might introduce a product to a broad audience, while a colleague inside a school helps turn that awareness into actual classroom use.

From Online Discovery to Classroom Use

Educator influence operates through professional relationships as much as through individual creators’ public platforms, said Stephanie Workman-Bolden, senior vice president of partner success at education company Discovery Education.

The company’s Discovery Educator Network brings educators together to exchange ideas, discuss instructional challenges, and learn from peers. Its activities include professional learning opportunities, virtual and in-person events, and groups organized around shared interests.

Workman-Bolden said the community’s approach starts with educators’ needs rather than a particular product. Educators might gather to discuss literacy, career-connected learning, or another instructional priority, before exploring resources that could help address the challenge.

“The foundation of [the Discovery Educator Network] isn’t the product,” she said. “The foundation is the whole educator … and seeing deeper discussions, deeper engagement with these folks.”

Through these educator professional networks, products can travel across schools and districts. Workman-Bolden described educators in different parts of Florida, for example, connecting to discuss science instruction and curriculum adoption, despite differences in their students and local contexts.

These relationships can provide a setting for teachers to compare experiences and consider whether an approach that worked elsewhere might work for them, she said.

But not everyone involved in an educator community is an enthusiastic promoter of a company’s offerings, she said. Educators can be valuable partners even when they criticize a company’s products or approach. Their participation doesn’t depend on praising everything the company does, Workman-Bolden said.

Teachers Can Influence Adoption, But They Don’t Always Control It

Even when a teacher’s recommendation carries weight among colleagues, the path from classroom interest to a districtwide contract can be long.

Christopher Saldaña, an education researcher who has studied programs in which companies recruit teachers to promote their products and serve as brand ambassadors, said the role teachers play in technology adoption varies by district. Each district has its own purchasing processes, and teachers’ authority over decisions differs accordingly.

Teachers can influence which tools colleagues try in their classrooms, he said, and district leaders may also turn to teachers who have developed technology expertise to help evaluate product or guide adoption.

Some vendor brand amabassador programs offer educators certifications, badges, or other credentials that can signal familiarity with a product. But Saldaña, who is also an assistant professor of K-12 educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it can be difficult to determine whether that familiarity reflects independent expertise, a company’s preferred way of presenting its product, or a combination of the two.

“It gets really murky because it’s unclear exactly whether the knowledge that the individual has developed about educational technology products is driven by what the companies want them to know and want them to say, or if it’s truly driven by what educators think is the most effective way to adopt educational technology in classrooms,” Saldaña said.

Nesi, the pocast host and Rutgers instructor, likewise cautioned that teachers and content creators generally do not have much direct control over district purchasing decisions. They can help a product gain awareness and encourage educators to test it, but companies still need to understand who makes decisions about contracts, budget, technology, and implementation.

Davis, of the Cool Cat Teacher blog, said her own experience reflects that divide. Teachers might discover a tool through a creator, test it, and ask their schools to purchase it. But purchasing decisions can also be driven by curriculum alignment, conference demonstrations, existing contracts, and district-level priorities.

For example, she said some tools gain traction when they are integrated with materials from a textbook provider. Meanwhile, schools facing financial pressure may be consolidating overlapping products rather than adding new ones.

For vendors measuring the impact of influencer campaigns, this creates a challenge as an educator’s recommendation might generate awareness, classroom experimentation, or internal advocacy, without producing an immediate purchase.

Saldaña said the evidence remains limited on how teacher ambassador relationships affect technology adoption at scale. He has not seen reliable data establishing how many educators participate in these programs, and he said their effect on districtwide purchasing is difficult to quantify.

These relationships may help companies distinguish their products from competitors, he said, particularly when they reach teachers who influence their peers, but the impact is less certain when the goal is to drive adoption across an entire district.

Paid Partnerships Introduce Questions of Trust

The growing role of educator creators also raises questions about the relationship between a recommendation and the financial or professional incentives behind it.

Davis works with companies on sponsored podcasts, posts, and other content. She said she is selective about the products she promotes, discloses sponsorships, and tests products before agreeing to work with companies. She has declined to endorse products, including AI detectors, when she does not believe they work or align with her educational priorities.

She said some companies have asked her to work with them without disclosing the relationship. In those cases, she refuses.

For Davis, the most valuable partnerships are the those that outlast the campaign itself.

“There are people that hired me 10 years, 15 years ago, and I still talk about their product because I use it,” she said. “That’s the gold. If your product is as good as you think it is, then [educators] will keep using it and talking about it.”

Nesi said he takes a different approach for his House of #EdTech podcast. He said he does not accept paid ambassador roles and wants to maintain independence in what he recommends. He will consider pitches, but he wants to use or explore a product before discussing it with his audience.

Both emphasized the importance of protecting the trust they have built with educators. A creator who promotes too many products, or repeatedly endorses tools without meaningful firsthand experience, risks undermining the credibility that made the person’s content attractive to vendors in the first place, Nesi said.

Saldaña’s research raises a related concern. Financial compensation is not the only potential incentive that shapes an educator’s relationship with a company. Professional development, free access to products, credentials, conference opportunities, and the possibility of future paid work can also influence behavior.

“Even when no money changes hands, learning to use a particular tool can create costs for switching to a competitor,” he said.

That may make it harder for an educator to evaluate alternatives independently, he said.

A teacher’s experience is an important part of the adoption process, Saldaña said, but schools need structures that help them understand those relationships when evaluating educators’ recommendations.

As the market for educator influence evolves alongside the products teachers are being asked to evaluate, Davis said teachers and districts are becoming more selective about new tools, particularly when multiple products offer similar capabilities.

Educators have invested time in building lesson materials and workflows within existing platforms, she said, making it harder to persuade them to switch.

She also sees teachers experimenting with AI tools to build their own applications, including tools tailored to particular classroom needs. That may give educators new options outside traditional vendor offerings, she said.

Nesi similarly sees AI making it easier for teachers to create or adapt tools themselves. But simultaneously, the rise of AI will lead to higher volumes of artificially generated marketing materials, making trusted voices even more important for consumers, he said.

“Human-generated content is going to be more valuable than ever,” he said. “Educators are picking their platform of choice— whether its Instagram, TikTok, or listening to podcasts— and they know where to find the valued voices and opinions that they have come to know and trust.”