Canada's AI Innovators

Every teacher knows the struggle. Lesson planning that stretches into the evening. Grading that piles up on weekends. Supporting students with diverse learning needs, all while managing larger classrooms with less support.

“Teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world,” explains Nicholas Svensson, CEO of SMART Technologies. “But the system around them is making it nearly impossible.”

For over forty years, SMART has been building tools that bring teaching alive—from the pioneering SMART Board to classroom solutions now used in 175 countries. But even as the Calgary-founded company expanded globally, Svensson knew they could do more.

A system under strain needed a forward-thinking solution

SMART's answer came through Lumio—a platform designed specifically around how teachers actually work, not how technologists think they should.

The breakthrough arrived with AI Assist, an intelligent feature embedded in Lumio that handles the work teachers dread most: lesson planning.

“What used to take hours now takes minutes,” Svensson notes. Teachers input their learning objectives and AI Assist generates comprehensive lesson plans, activities, and assessment materials tailored to their students' needs.

“We’re actually seeing teacher productivity increase by up to 75%,” he continues.

But the real magic happens when teachers reclaim their time. They use it purposefully—diving deeper into meeting diverse learning needs, enriching lessons to drive engagement, and most importantly, connecting meaningfully with their students.

Driving inclusion around the globe

Across SMART's global footprint, the impact is being felt in profound ways.

In Ontario, a teacher used Lumio's personalized learning tools to help a non-verbal student sign their name for the first time—a milestone that might have taken a lot longer without access to these tools.

“Technology has some magic effect on letting students with learning disabilities open up,” Svensson says. “You see parents with tears in their eyes. There’s some magic there.”

In Nunavut, where educational resources are severely limited, teachers are bridging geographic and resource gaps to deliver quality instruction to remote students. In Indigenous communities around the world, educators are using SMART’s AI-powered tools to keep language alive and woven into curricula, preserving cultural heritage while meeting modern educational standards.

"Inclusion has always been a big part of SMART. It’s an important design element for everything we do," he adds.

Built to reach every classroom

Stories like these raise an obvious question: how do you deliver AI-powered tools to a classroom in Nunavut, where connectivity is fragile and educational resources are scarce—with the same speed and reliability as downtown Calgary?

SMART built Lumio on Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS hosts the platform's data and powers AI Assist in every country where SMART operates, scaling from urban centres to remote communities where low latency isn't a luxury. It's the difference between a tool that works and one that gets abandoned.

Equally critical is trust. Schools, parents, and education ministries demand strict data privacy. AWS's enterprise-grade security and built-in guardrails for generative AI—through Amazon Bedrock—give SMART the foundation to meet those standards globally.

"For a company built on trust, we really rely on AWS’s enterprise-grade security, privacy, and built-in guardrails for generative AI through Amazon Bedrock," says Svensson.

A new vision for teaching

At its core, SMART's mission remains unchanged: teachers don't need to become tech experts. They need simple, intuitive technology that reduces preparation time and increases meaningful engagement.

With Lumio and AI Assist powered by AWS, that vision is becoming reality. Teachers around the globe are reclaiming their capacity, reaching students with greater personalization, and focusing on what they do best—inspiring the next generation.

“The most important thing for a teacher is to teach, not to get caught up in all the technology in the classroom,” Svensson concludes. "It's a big challenge, but it's one that we're here to serve."