Can my child learn from an AI tutor without a screen?

Yes. Lessons on Peko Pal is a tutor that works entirely out loud. Your child holds the button and talks; Peko asks questions, listens to the answer, and teaches from there. There is nothing to read, tap or watch, and you see what happened in the Peko Pal app on your iPhone.

Here is how it differs from a learning app on a tablet.

You set the topic, not a grade level

In the Peko Pal app you give each lesson plan two things in your own words: a topic ("multiplication", "why the seasons happen", "spelling tricky words") and a goal ("know their times tables up to 12"). There is no age or school year to pick and no library of lessons to choose from. Working out what your child is ready for is Peko's job.

You can add several topics. Lessons has its own place on the device, and your child steers to it and picks a topic by ear. If there are no active topics, Lessons does not appear on the device at all.

Peko finds their level by asking

The first time your child opens a topic, Peko does not teach anything. It asks three short questions, easy to harder, and asks your child to explain their thinking out loud. It is framed as a warm-up and never called a test. From those answers Peko works out where your child actually is and starts one step above it. Every later session picks up where the last one ended.

Two children of the same age with the same plan can get completely different sessions, and a child who is ahead in one subject and behind in another is met correctly in both.

How it teaches

• It doesn't hand out answers. When your child is stuck, Peko narrows the question or breaks it into a smaller one. After a couple of hints it works the first step out loud and hands the rest back.
• Your child has to explain. No yes-or-no questions, no multiple choice, and a bare number is not accepted: Peko asks how they got it. Guessing cannot look like understanding.
• Wrong answers are useful. Peko looks for the rule your child is applying, which is usually a sensible rule used in the wrong place, and fixes the rule rather than the answer.
• It names the strategy. When your child gets something, Peko says how they got it, because the method is the part worth keeping.

What you see as a parent

Open a topic in the app to see where your child is (beginner, developing, proficient or advanced, in one plain sentence), progress toward your goal as a percentage of what they have demonstrated, the skills that are mastered, shaky or still being learned, the sticking points Peko is working on, and every session with the actual questions asked and your child's answers in their own words.

Peko's own judgement is checked too. What your child said is compared against the recording of the conversation, and a second, different AI re-judges each answer without being told what Peko decided. If either check disagrees, you see a warning on that question. The full detail is in Lessons.

Good to know

• Lessons is an AI app. AI on Peko Pal is optional and off until you turn it on, and your child only talks to it while holding the button. See How Peko Pal's AI works.
• Lessons need Wi-Fi while they run.
• You can look back over any session in the app, so you stay in the loop without sitting beside them.