Tutoring and feedback
A good tutor does three things a worksheet cannot: notices where the thinking went wrong, asks the next question instead of giving the answer, and stops when the learner has it.
The question after the question
Feedback that only marks an answer right or wrong teaches the answer. Feedback that asks what the learner expected, and why, teaches the method. We build tools around the second kind: they hold a worked problem open, ask for the next step, and give a hint that lowers the cliff without removing it.
Tell me where it stopped making sense
Most learners cannot say what they do not understand, but they can point at the line where they got lost. Tools that start from that line, not from a topic menu, reach the real gap faster.
Writing feedback that is read
Margin comments get skimmed when there are forty of them. We favour few, ranked comments, each tied to a sentence, each naming one thing to try next.
The teacher stays in the loop
A tool that talks to a learner should leave a record a teacher can read in a minute: what was asked, what was tried, where help was needed. The teacher decides what to do with it.
What a good hint looks like
Take a learner stuck on a physics problem. The weakest help is the full solution: it feels kind and teaches little. The next weakest is a vague nudge to try again. The useful middle is a ladder. First a question that points at the relevant idea. Then a smaller one that names the step. Only then the step itself, and never before the learner has made an attempt.
The ladder works because it keeps the learner doing the thinking for as long as possible. Each rung costs the learner a little pride and saves them a lot of time, and they choose when to climb. A tool built this way can tell, from how far up the ladder someone went, which idea needs another look next week.
None of this replaces a teacher. It gives the teacher something a pile of marked worksheets never does: a picture of where this particular class got stuck, in their own words, before the next lesson is planned.