Lumio by SMART

What is Lumio app?

Lumio is the new and shorter name for SMART Learning Suite Online, published by the familiar classroom hardware and software producer SMART Technologies.

Lumio builds upon the previous iterations of the software to enhance the established features and incorporate new ones, especially regarding collaboration, remote learning and interactivity.

The result is a powerful, web-based platform for teachers to deliver fantastic-looking lessons to engage students.

What we love about What is Lumio app?

Lumio has taken a web-based approach to provide its tools, which is great for compatibility. Kids with any reasonably modern device, computer, Chromebook, or phone will be able to view and participate in Lumio-based lessons.

The compatibility goes deeper too. All sorts of static files, media, and lesson presentations work with Lumio, meaning teachers won't have to abandon tried and trusted resources. Your favourite third-party tools are likely to still work, too, with Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Canvas LMS all supported.

Schools might not want to invest in tools that are only useful for remote teaching but relying on tools that have no distance learning functionality could be shortsighted. Lumio works with either of these use cases well. Its student feedback and teacher presentation tools have many uses, whether in a traditional classroom or with students and teachers each working remotely.

What skills does it improve?

Lumio is a blank canvas as far as lesson content is concerned. Its collaboration and feedback tools support students' social skills and teamwork in ways that other, more one-way teaching tools cannot.

What age is it appropriate for?

The only age-limiting factor for Lumio is the ability to use the devices on which students view the content. Teachers can use it in the classroom as they would any other interactive whiteboard software. In some cases, the device-based features for student interaction might require support from teachers or assistants.  

For remote lessons, teachers will have to consider how well each child will connect to the Lumio session, and parents may need to help children who are young or have special needs.

Is Lumio easy to use?

Lumio and the lesson tools associated with it are powerful and flexible, which means that it comes with a learning curve for teachers. However, it will not delay you much. You'll need to familiarise yourself with the tools, process and icons, but it won't take anyone with some experience of interactive learning resources much time to do this.

All of the tools used during this review of Lumio worked just as expected, whether it was importing existing content, creating an interactive activity or making a static resource more interactive.

New accounts come with two existing presentations to ease you into Lumio :

• A getting started presentation shows you the tools, structure, and how students will view the lessons you produce on Lumio.
• A student-paced example shows how an actual Lumio lesson might look based on addition sentences.  

There is a detailed and easy-to-understand support section on the Lumio website, and there are plenty of community-produced resources you can use as inspiration and guides.

How will students benefit?

Whether students are remote from the teacher or in the same room, Lumio helps to increase student engagement by providing the tools to allow learner input.  

The shout-it-out tool asks all kids to respond to a teacher prompt or question using their devices. These answers are immediately visible to the teacher.

You might be used to getting single kids out to complete interactive exercises on the class whiteboard, but Lumio lets each child complete your tasks individually on their own screens. For example, you could use the Match-'em-up activity to link dates to events or definitions to terms.  

Other game-style activities make it easy to build interaction into your lessons. The added variety and graphical presentation of these will help grab kids' attention and encourage them to practise what they have learned.

As Lumio includes powerful collaboration tools, students can work with their classmates even when they are all in their own homes. Kids won't have to learn how to use new software, which is helpful for kids who struggle with the subjects as they won't have to think so much about using the learning app itself.

How will teachers benefit?

Teachers don't have to start from scratch! You can bring in lessons created in SMART Notebook, PowerPoint, PDF, and your other favourite resources. You can even upload static worksheets that kids can annotate and collaborate on remotely. Mix and match these with the Lumio tools to create lessons that work well for your students.

Any tool that minimises the time delay between teaching kids and finding out if they understood is valuable, and Lumio excels at this. Quizzes, assessments, and polls send data to your dashboard to give you an instant picture of your students' current understanding and ensure that no individual is left behind.

Planning with Lumio is quick and easy after a short period of familiarising yourself with it. You can prepare lessons anytime you have access to a suitable device as all of your resources will be at hand in the unlimited storage a premium account has bundled with it. Remixing existing lessons or accessing previously created ones are time-efficient ways to prepare for upcoming classes.

The built-in content will be very welcome to teachers tired of reinventing the wheel. There are loads of manipulatives, graphical organisers like mind maps, and even whole lessons shared by the community of Lumio-using teachers. If you are already a fan of some online interactive resources such as the phet science simulations or desmos graphical calculators, they too slot in seamlessly.

However, should teachers want to start from the ground up, they can do so within Lumio using familiar layout tools.

How will parents benefit?

Lumio is primarily a tool for teachers, but as it lets you create a free account, parents have nothing to lose in trying it out. You could use it to help homeschool your child or even help them with homework if you are not at home.

What can Lumio improve on?

At the time of review, many of the Lumio support pages appeared on pages with a URL that included the word legacy.  This might be a bit confusing for anyone who knows about the changes to the product, as it creates the impression you might be accessing the support for older software.

How much does Lumio cost?

Anyone, teacher or not, can subscribe to Lumio for free and use all its features.

What is included with the free version vs. paid?

The free Basic Plan has 50MB of storage for lessons, whereas the premium Single Plan has unlimited space. Schools should contact SMART via its website to find out about whole-school or district subscriptions (Group Plan).

Subscribers to Single and Group plans can access Lumio and SMART Notebook.

Is Lumio safe to use?

There are no advertisements or general communication facilities within Lumio, but teachers and parents should be aware of its capabilities to ensure kids use it sensibly.  

As with any software that facilitates collaboration, students should be aware of what is inappropriate when they work online with their classmates. Workspace collaboration can continue after the formal session if teachers allow it, which could be unsupervised.

Teachers have an option to allow guest access or not. With this disallowed, students will need to sign in to access your lesson. Disabling this option will also let you better see which students are contributing to the lesson.

Overall rating of the app.

It was unlikely that an experienced long-term developer of hardware and software for schools would disappoint when it turned its attention to enabling new ways of teaching and learning. Lumio is a superb tool that will make teachers' lives easier, students' learning more varied and productive, and lessons more flexible.

If you aren't already invested in SMART's hardware or software ecosystem, it is easy to see what it has to offer you by taking out a personal plan. Use this alongside this review of Lumio, and you'll have a clear idea of how it can add to your day-to-day lessons and be part of your school's preparedness for any future remote-teaching needs.

For ease of use, power, flexibility and compatibility, we have awarded SMART's Lumio five stars.