AllFable

Educational Stories on Anything, Anyone, Any style – at Scale

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Motivation

Joey has tutored rich kids in Beijing, China for 2 months, Cambodian village children for a month, and rural Australian kids for weeks.

What was common among all: children had a curiosity demanding to be fed, and parents desired better education for their kids. The Chinese parents told Joey they paid $60k USD per year per kid, the Cambodian parents told Joey they were thankful for coming down, while the Aussie kids said they were inspired to go to university. He saw unmet gaps in demand for education and in the supply accessible. He believes technology can provide more scalable quality education to all regardless of their current education level, cultural background, or language.

Findings

Teachers have a difficult job, they have to:

  • adapt to new methods of teaching post-pandemic.
  • deal with ChatGPT's impact on assessments and how generative AI transforms education more broadly.
  • spend so much time outside the classroom – preparing for the next class, grading, planning, reporting writing...etc.
  • engage students with the same old teaching tools, textbooks, slides and quizzes – in a world with TikTok, videogames, and short-form content.
  • think about personalised teaching for each child and tailor their teaching styles constantly.

Students have a difficult job, they have to:

  • adapt to new methods of learning post-pandemic.
  • now deal with suspicion from teachers if they submit assessments.
  • constantly deal with tempatation to use ChatGPT to cheat unfairly in assessments.
  • keep themselves engaged in traditional classroom, when their phone holds all the TikToks, social-media, and videogames their brain is now wired to crave.

Why aren't educational content as fun as videogames or as engaging as TikToks?

  • Answer: They can be, but it's extremely resource intensive for not much monetary incentive.
  • For example, Kurzgesagt (20 mil subs) and CGP Grey (~6mil subs) are popular education YouTubers known for their beautiful, and engaging storytelling in their educational videos. Image > To create one video, it takes Kurzgesagt a team of 2-3 animators 8-12 weeks to illustrate over 200 panels before edits.
  • A handful of TikTok shorts could make more money in a shorter-time. While educational videogames are high-risk, low-reward relative to safer genres.
  • Students are learning with outdated mediums of educational content (textbooks, notes, slides...etc) - How can we update educational content at scale?

How can we empower teachers to teach and students to learn?

Generative AI technology enables educational transformation at scale.

What it does

AllFable's mission is to empower teachers in teaching and engage students in learning – at scale

Imagine if learning was as engaging as a TikTok video.

AllFable works towards this by creating new mediums of educational content. Providing engaging and tailored learning for the next generation of students.

This MVP uses generative AI completely to create and embed explanatory and engaging illustrations in stories at scale, so K-12 students can learn on a deeper level of engagement and personalisation.

In the future, AllFable aims to create any medium a student wants to learn with.

Teachers can:

  • State the content they are trying to teach and receive a generated lesson plan, and quiz.

Students can:

  • State the content they are trying to learn and receive a generated educatational story.
  • This story has illustrations with the student's chosen famous figure and in the student's preferred illustration style.
  • Famous Figures: Harrison Ford, Barack Obama, Tucker Carlson, Lady Gaga
  • Illustraton Styles: Anime, Cinematic, Realistic Art

Challenges we ran into

Joey here, bit of a rollercoaster story

  • I was invited to join a team of 3 (the 3 were friends).
  • After spending time ideating, they agreed to work on AllFable.
  • At 3am on Sat, the 3 decided to revert back to their original idea while I went to toilet.
  • They asked me to leave the team when I returned, as my skillset wasn't needed anymore.
  • Felt a bit devastated because I flew here from Australia for TreeHacks, and this team formation experience put me in a rough situation.
  • Since it was 5hrs after hacking started, I ended up not finding a team with a good fit in idea to join.
  • I solo hacked this project together - without a CS degree.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Making a pretty cool project that could help kids enjoy learning at scale.
  • Prepping and Interviewing at the YC Challenge with his friend Jasmine (she wasn't planning to do this hack, but wanted to take this further afterwards.)
  • Gracefully leaving the initial team with risk understood, lessons learnt, and with emotions processed in a healthy manner.
  • OpenAI API first-time use!
  • Harrison Ford images on demand.

What we learned

  • Always trust the vibe-check when joining a new team.
  • However, there is risk in any decision - accept it, and take positive action to move forward.
  • One can surpass their limits.

What's next for AllFable

  • More immersive channels and mediums of education content explored.
  • Augment and transform other mediums into new formats that better serve the current generation of students, for example:
  • Transform wikipedia/scientific articles/textbooks into visual infographics and kurzgesagt-like educational videos.
  • Transform podcasts and TED talks into comic books.
  • Empower teachers with better tools. A teacher can generate lesson plans, slides, and quizzes from a single prompt on what they want to teach.
  • More mediums explored: Sound, video, AR/VR experiences, slides, artwork…etc.

Upon Request: Sample Story, Quiz, and Lesson Plan sample outputs Pitch/Demo recording

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