STARTING WITH MY WHY
How Sorone was born
I take many photos of my students. It’s how I document my work and use those photos to support my learning stories. To share with parents. To jog my memory. To honour a moment. I love taking pictures and capturing those moments. I am a good photographer. (I’m not, but I enjoy the challenge.) What I dislike is what happens afterwards.
I don’t love that those photos live on my camera roll. I don’t love scrolling endlessly through them, trying to find one or two moments that support a story I’ve just written. I don’t love sorting them. And if you read my last post, you’ll know I don’t write stories daily. Sometimes, the big projects only get written about every couple of months. So when I finally sit down to document, I’m sorting through months of photos, and everything’s jumbled.
Because I’m not that organised, I’ll put my hand up; I’m not that person. I wish I were. And I’m always in awe (and a bit of envy) when I see people with perfectly organised folders and drives. I take my hat off to you. But me? I’d rather be doing something I’m good at, like talking to children, stretching their thinking, asking big questions, and going on adventures. That’s what I’m good at, not organising photos.
And that’s when the thought came: In the age of AI... why can’t my phone do this for me? I can say
“Hey Siri” to set a reminder, send a message, and play music. Why can’t I say, “Hey Siri, sort my photos by topic, child, and date”? I tried. It didn’t work. So, I thought, why not ask Apple to build it?
They didn’t reply.
Then, a colleague joked, “Why don’t you build something yourself?” And I laughed, too. Because that’s ridiculous... right?
But I sat with it. And I asked myself: Why not? Why couldn’t I? So I did the next thing: I asked AI.
And it told me, ‘You can.’ Here’s how. I did my research. And AI was right; I could. So I asked myself,
What have I got to lose? I could either stay frustrated or give it a go.
That’s how Sorone was born, a voice-first photo organisation app.
I say the folder name, take the photo or photos(and video), and that’s it. To borrow one of my favourite words, I learned while living in Qatar: Khalas. It’s done.
Sorone is now in its second stage of testing in the hands of real teachers who take photos and know this pain.