I'm nearly 2 year in and just turned 50. This resonates with me. I'm a parent building an EdTech app for my child. He just plain refuses to read. All he wants to do is play Roblox or watch YouTube videos about playing games (or cats).
The hardest part isn't the code. For me it's when I see VC-backed competitors with full teams. When I look back and remember working in a team of 20 devs with PMs and other support staff, it's hard to plough on alone. I'm glad of AI or this project would have been impossible. When my boy reads a story the app generated and asks if he can read another one, it makes it all feel worth it.
The loneliness is real. No one to bounce ideas off, no one to celebrate small wins with. Thinking about launching on HN soon just to find other builders in the EdTech space.
Still figuring it out. But my child is reading again, so that's a win for me.
The jump in writing quality between GPT-4 and GPT-5.1 is hugely noticeable if you're specific with prompting (requires a bit of trial and error).
I've been using it to generate children's stories and reading comprehension questions for a UK curriculum app. The difference:
• GPT-4: Generic questions, often not engaging enough for 7-year-olds • GPT-5.1: Adapts tone, vocabulary, and complexity when you give it curriculum constraints
I realised the model isn't "smart enough" just to throw in a prompt like "write a story about..." - I needed structured prompts with specific examples of the target style.
It's still not perfect, but it's a massive improvement and can be called genuinely useful vs. just a novelty.
I love the idea, but I'm a bit stuck on the implementation. I tried the website
and clicked a movie. I had sentences from the movie (presumably) but didn't know
how they related to the movie and couldn't see any video.
Is this an alpha version? Are there more features planned?
I think this is a wonderful idea. I have spent some time in the past teaching
TOEFL and found that children enjoyed games more than anything else.
Gamification of learning seems to me to be the way forward.
Using a well-known game such as UNO is a great idea for the reasons you state -
not as much time wasted on explaining complicated instructions and children can
help each other if needed.
Gamification is definitely a powerful tool! I also make Kahoot quizzes because they make learning feel like a game show. But I have fallen out of favor with Kahoot, because they have started to remove many previously free features.
But above all else, finding a way to keep students interested and engaged in the learning process is key!
The hardest part isn't the code. For me it's when I see VC-backed competitors with full teams. When I look back and remember working in a team of 20 devs with PMs and other support staff, it's hard to plough on alone. I'm glad of AI or this project would have been impossible. When my boy reads a story the app generated and asks if he can read another one, it makes it all feel worth it.
The loneliness is real. No one to bounce ideas off, no one to celebrate small wins with. Thinking about launching on HN soon just to find other builders in the EdTech space.
Still figuring it out. But my child is reading again, so that's a win for me.