It started with my son. He is two, and he loves dinosaurs. He can name them one after another, even the ones that look almost the same, and it still amazes me. We learned the simplest way we could, pointing at plain images from a Google search. But there was no app that did just this. One creature at a time, simple, exactly what I wanted. So I decided to build it myself.
I call it Indecks. A very simple thing. A deck of cards a child can swipe through, one at a time. They look at the picture, name what they see, read a short line, and move on. I built it to show that technology, and AI especially, was never meant only for the office. It can teach. It can reach a child.
At the time I was deep in AI, reading about ordinary people building their own apps. I made mine exactly how I imagined it. I used AI to generate the images, and it cost nothing. Then I handed it to my son. He loved it. He scrolled through the same twenty cards again and again, naming each one. My four-year-old daughter tried it. My eight-year-old niece tried it. They all loved it too.
My sister once told me how hard it was to find books about Philippine animals with their Tagalog and Visayan names. A small gap, but the kind one person can close if they simply decide to. The app grew naturally. I made sure the images were true to life, but simple enough for a child to recognize. I designed it for a parent and a child to sit together, one reading the facts aloud, the other swiping and naming, both of them learning.
I want Filipinos to feel at home with technology. In his encyclical on AI, Pope Leo warned about the gap that technology can open between people, and reminded us that we each carry a responsibility to leave no one behind.
I kept developing Indecks with one goal: keep it simple. Free, always. No internet needed once it is downloaded, because so many places here still have none. Light enough to run on any phone, tablet, or computer, so any school, parent, or teacher can pick it up and begin teaching.
I do love books. I love the weight of a real flashcard. But publishing is expensive, and technology has made sharing almost effortless. We already carry the devices in our pockets. Build it this way, and the same lesson can travel to any child, anywhere. It needs a connection once, just to download. After that it runs in any classroom, in any corner of the world, where books cannot always reach.
That is the mission I am trying to accomplish.
One last thing. If you are a parent or a teacher, I want you to know that you can build something like this too. If you ever want to learn how, reach out. I would gladly teach you.
Iñigo Taojo
inigo@wray.solar