When teachers are freed to teach, students thrive
The crisis in educational systems
Every week, a full day disappears into paperwork. Think about that for a moment. The modern educator—someone who entered the profession to nurture minds, ignite curiosity, and shape the next generation—spends approximately 20% of their working hours on tasks that have nothing to do with teaching.
This isn't just inefficiency. It's a philosophical crisis.
According to recent SINTEF/UNIO studies, 40% of Norwegian primary-school teachers report feeling emotionally exhausted. When I first encountered this statistic, I wasn't surprised—but I was deeply troubled. This exhaustion isn't just a personal burden for teachers; it transfers directly to students, fundamentally altering the educational experience in ways we're only beginning to understand.
What we're witnessing is a systematic theft of creative energy—taking teachers away from the human connection at the heart of education and redirecting it toward administrative busywork.
Why we must solve this problem
Educational technology typically focuses on student-facing solutions. New learning platforms, interactive content, personalized learning paths—these innovations have their place. But they miss the most critical leverage point in the educational ecosystem: the teacher.
We believe the highest-impact educational technology isn't one that replaces teachers or changes how students learn. It's technology that frees teachers to fully engage in the irreplaceable human elements of teaching.
This isn't just about efficiency or convenience. It's about restoring the philosophical purpose of education itself. When a teacher's cognitive resources are consumed by administrative demands, documentation requirements, and fragmented IT systems, we don't just lose productivity—we lose wisdom, connection, and the subtle human interactions that shape young minds.
How technology can restore
The right approach to educational technology doesn't begin with code or algorithms. It begins with deep understanding of the teacher experience.
Through extensive conversations with educators across Norway, we've identified three core dimensions of the problem:
Time Theft: Administrative demands stealing hours that should be directed toward teaching and human connection: paperwork, dealing with parent issues, and organizing assessments of students
Energy Drain: The cognitive and emotional burden of task-switching between teaching and administrative work is huge
Student Impact: The diminished quality of education when teachers cannot fully engage
The solution isn't to add another system or platform that requires teachers attention. It's to simplify first, then create technology that adapts to teachers—working in the background to eliminate administrative friction while freeing up time for the uniquely human elements that make teaching powerful.
We believe we can give teachers back 7 hours every week—a full day of teaching capacity returned to its rightful purpose.
What we've built
After months of research, development, and teacher collaboration, we've created Alma—a teaching assistant designed specifically to eliminate administrative burden while amplifying teacher creativity.
Alma handles the routine while you handle the remarkable:
Lesson Creation: Generates differentiated lesson plans aligned to curriculum requirements automatically, creates presentation learning materials from your teaching concepts, and soon activities with real-time adaptation based on student engagement
Student Progress: Tracks individual learning patterns across subjects, identifies early intervention opportunities, automatically generates actionable insights for parent meetings
Administrative Tasks: Compiles progress reports in your voice, automatically schedules parent conferences based on availability, maintains digital portfolio of student work
Parent Communication: Drafts personalized parent updates while preserving your tone, translates communications for multilingual families, creates grade-level newsletters highlighting classroom achievements
This isn't just another tool to learn. It's a thinking partner that adapts to your teaching style, understands your priorities, and handles the mechanical aspects of education so you can focus on the meaningful.
The origin
This mission is personal for me. My mother, a lifelong educator with 30 years of experience, began experimenting with AI for teaching tasks. I watched as she recaptured the creative spark that administrative burdens had gradually dimmed over decades of service.
Seeing her transform from overwhelmed to energized became our blueprint: technology should restore teaching joy, not replace it. It should handle the mechanical so humans can focus on the meaningful.
Join us
We're now assembling a creative group of 5 Norwegian schools to shape Alma's development. This isn't just about testing a product—it's about co-creating the future of educational technology.
As a participant, you'll receive:
Hands-on access to technology that gives you back hours every week
Direct input into technology development and refinement
The opportunity to shape solutions that could benefit your school and thousands of other schools globally
Together, we can create a future where technology serves its highest purpose: not replacing human connection, but making more room for it to flourish.
Because when teachers are freed to teach, students truly thrive.
Are you a school leader or teacher that share our vision of the future? Then I invite you to contact me (alf@01.inc) to learn more about how we're creating the educational technology of the future.