Boethius

Over the last few months, Boethius has undergone many enhances, but the highlights includes:

1. Child accounts no longer require passwords to sign in, the parent can simply copy a magic link and save it as a browser bookmark
2. All exercise types have been updated to not require use of the mouse
3. The styling has been completely changed to give it a fresh cyberpunk aesthetic
4. The design is more responsive to device type is now intended to support tablet form factors (such as iPads) in addition to desktop computers
5. There are now over 1,000 unique exercises across grammar, arithmetic, and astronomy
6. Dozens of Latin words have improved pronunciation
7. The settings page allows control of the voice, volume, and speed used for exercises with an audio component

I took an extended break from this one, but have just picked it back up and intend to keep going with it.

A couple updates:

1. Implemented reCAPTCHA to deal with an issue where Russian spam accounts were being created almost continually
2. Added several new grammar lessons
3. Changed the way child account get authed, so that kids don't need to memorize their password in order to do their daily workout (but parent accounts still do)

I took an extended break from working on the app due to sad events, but have revived things now that our 8YO is about to start the new school year. The app has been re-designed with lessons being organized into grades by art (2nd grade grammar, 1st grade astronomy, etc...), so it should be easier for new users to figure out which lessons their kids should concentrate on.

In addition to those changes in functionality, I'm managed to create exercises covering 1st through 3rd grade in grammar, arithmetic, and astronomy, as well as 1st grade geometry.

It's probably true that I could make much quicker progress with a co-founder, so if you are a dev or designer interested in classical education: let's talk.

I've recently finished some core functionality like parents being able to create and keep tabs on child accounts, and having forms to capture general feedback as well as feedback on specific exercises within the app.

Also, I've wired up Google Analytics so I'll have a semi-decent idea about how people are using the site and where they are coming from, so now seems like a decent time to start trying to validate the idea.

I posted to subreddit with a couple thousand members, which seems big enough to maybe get some takers. My hope is that I can be alerted to any show-stoppers or major missing features before I promote it any more widely.

I finished the minimum useful version and then announced the project on IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/post/mvp-boethius-classical-education-for-a-digital-age-293a91a185), but didn't get much interest besides from @8bit, which is a little disappointing, but it is a very early version and is also pretty niche. I'll polish things up a bit until our homeschool co-op restarts, at which point I'll introduce it to the other parents to get feedback and hopefully validate the idea (or not).

We are homeschooling my son using a classical liberal arts curriculum. The workbooks are good, but he spends too much time doing exercises he already has down and not enough on the things he's still struggling with, which seemed kinda inefficient to me. I had used spaced-repetition software in the past and had pretty good success with it, but the existing clients don't work that great for my use case because they (1) aren't interactive, so are boring, (2) rely on self-grading, which isn't ideal, and (3) aren't gamified, so likely wouldn't stick as a habit.

Boethius is my attempt at fixing each of these paint points.