Spark

Unusually for me, about a year ago I started reading the r/teachers subreddit, and to my surprise, it turned out to be a fascinating source of valuable insights — AI in education, teaching with AI, cheating with AI, curriculum development, lesson and unit management, student mental health, emotional intelligence, and more. As I kept reading about all these problems in the background, I started thinking about how I could tackle one of these teaching pain points.

First attempt: classroom management — and it included everything, I mean absolutely everything. Student management, attendance management, student progress, homework assignments, and grades. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that trying to build this many features from scratch was a bad starting point and would most likely fail.

My decision was based on the fact that I need to understand more about the teaching process (US / Canada / EU) details with this experimental project - playground.

COPPA

Building something that collects data from kids under 13? You'd better get your app ready to comply with COPPA requirements, and I mean strictly! I found this super complex, so I just completely removed all the features that collected and stored student data and focused only on lesson and unit management.

_{Silicon Valley (Season 4, Episode 2), focused entirely on COPPA.}

At this point I'm getting suspicious that all education software is basically… corporate software. I mean, teachers don't buy it — schools buy it, districts buy it — but teachers don't get to choose their own tools. Just my opinion though.

Status Quo

There are still a lot of teachers who aren't good with computers or refuse to learn new technology — like how to use an iPad, Google Suite, stuff like that. I spotted some comments under an educational video about Chalk, a lesson planning app.

One teacher wrote: "This looks cool and everything, but I always just end up reverting to either Word or paper for lesson planning, as this looks too complex to set up, and appears to just add a lot of extra work to my already busy day."

Yep, plenty of teachers still use paper — simple templates, even ones generated by AI, just printed out. And TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers) is still super popular, where teachers create and sell educational tools to other teachers.

App

Are you a teacher? Tired of juggling lessons, students, and parent updates in different places? Inlay is classroom management for early grade educators — built to save you precious time.

What you get

• Curriculum in order. Subjects, units, and lessons live in one place, with a calendar and weekly view so you see the big picture without the scramble.
• Students under one roof. Each student has a profile for progress, attendance, and behavior notes. Journaling stays smooth and in one spot.
• Parents in the loop. A dedicated parent view lets families see progress and daily updates.

I believe that bridging the organizational gaps in the classroom with affordable software is the key to saving teachers’ time and enthusiasm.

Get started for free: one classroom, full access to core features, forever - Inlay . If you have any questions: Alex at Inlay