A boy earns every star in his class math app. Then a paper quiz comes home, and half of it is blank. His mother, like many parents, wonders which one to believe. A points system makes a child feel like they’re learning. Real mastery makes them feel capable.
Understanding Smart Technologies and Their Role in Education
Smart Technologies has been a pioneer in the EdTech space for over 35 years, providing tools like interactive displays and software solutions such as Lumio. These technologies are designed to create interactive and collaborative learning environments. By integrating these tools into the classroom, teachers can enhance student engagement and facilitate a more dynamic learning experience. Smart Technologies works globally with schools and educational systems to ensure their products meet the diverse needs of students and educators.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from The International Classroom podcast with Katie Novak of SMART Technologies:
Common questions from parents
Is classroom technology bad for my child?
How do I know if a learning app is working?
A company says its tool is linked to better outcomes. Should I trust that?
Should my child use AI for schoolwork?
The app scores look fine, but schoolwork is hard. What now?
A classroom tech company said it on its own podcast: decades of tech, and outcomes "stayed relatively flat." Here is what helps children learn instead.
Why hasn’t all this classroom tech made kids learn more?
The plainest answer came from a company that sells classroom tech. Katie Novak works at SMART Technologies, which makes SMART Board displays. On a teaching podcast, she said classrooms have had technology for decades. “But outcomes have stayed relatively flat,” she added.
Her own list of what goes with success was mostly about people. Teachers, students and the community help make the choices. Teacher training is steady and shared. It answers why a tool helps and how it fits their teaching. The host named the common miss. A school hands over new hardware and leaves teachers to it.
In our view, that is the real problem. Too many schools buy a screen as a purchase, not a plan for learning. The device arrives. The training, the time and the reason lag behind. Here is more on why handing every student a tablet was the easy part.
A grade on a dashboard is not a plan.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
So what makes a learning tool teach?
The screen is not the thing that teaches. What matters is whether the tool is built around how children learn. The studies we keep on learning tools point to a few ideas. We hold them as a direction, not a final word.
- Pulling it from memory. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) had students read a passage. Some reread it. Others were quizzed on it. A week later, the quizzed group remembered more.
- Spacing it out. A large review by Cepeda and colleagues (2006) looked at timing. The same practice stuck better spread over days than crammed into one sitting.
- Help at each step. VanLehn (2011) compared kinds of tutoring software. Tools that respond to each step of a child’s thinking did better. Tools that only check the final answer did less.
- Feedback that says what to do next. Kluger and DeNisi (1996) reviewed feedback studies. Feedback often helped, and sometimes it made things worse. In those studies, helpful feedback is private and points to the next step. A public score or a red X is more likely to backfire.
One detail matters at home. In that first study, rereading looked better on a test five minutes later. Quizzing won when the test came days later. Easy practice feels like progress. Harder recall is what lasted.
Some tools are built on these ideas. Think of a flashcard app that brings back missed cards a few days later. It uses recall and spacing together. That kind of tool is worth keeping.
Two limits travel with all of this. These studies tested methods, not the brand on your child’s tablet. How much any one app helps your child is still an open question. And even good tools work beside a teaching adult, not in place of one. The good ones free that adult up to teach. Read more in what studies found about screens and technology.
Key takeaways
- The screen isn't the teacher: How a tool is built matters more than the device.
- Recall beats rereading: Quizzed students remembered more a week later than those who reread.
- Count learning, not minutes: Time in an app is not what your child knows.
How do I tell if my child’s app is teaching?
Engagement is not learning. Minutes in the app and lessons completed are easy to count. They do not tell you what your child knows. Here are five questions to ask tonight, with your child beside you.
- Does it make your child pull the answer from memory? Or is it tap until something lights up?
- Does old work come back days later? Or does each lesson vanish once it is done?
- What happens after a wrong answer? Look for a hint at the missed step, not only a red X.
- Is the score private? A leaderboard puts the struggle on show.
- Does it free an adult to sit with your child? Or is it standing in for one?
Novak also likes built-in data on each student’s results. Data helps only when it leads to a next step. A grade on a dashboard is not a plan. We wrote more on whether an app is teaching or only keeping a child busy.
AI tools raise the same question. Novak’s strongest point was about understanding these tools, not buying more of them. She wants teachers and students to know what these tools do. Ask your child how a tool helped, and what it might have missed. The podcast also lands on this: AI is one tool, not a must-have.
Easy practice feels like progress. Harder recall is what lasted.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
You want real learning, not logged minutes, and so do we. The trouble is a system that buys a screen and calls it a plan. You don’t need a credential to be your child’s first teacher. You already are one. If the struggle stays, the free analysis asks what you see across subjects. Start the free Learning Difficulties Analysis.
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You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
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- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
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Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
