ceolin

> The 'Live Demo' probably shouldn't be locked behind a login unless there's a good reason for it.

I agree. But there were some technical issues I'd have to deal with to make it work properly and I didn't have the time to deal with it right now.

> do you plan to have general free courses?

The marketplace (mywisek.com) will likely have free courses.

> would I go to your site to hunt around for something interesting to learn, or are you always behind the scenes

You'll be able to hunt around for something interesting to learn.

Yeah, I thought about not requiring login but I'd have to add some specific logic to it. I figured it wouldn't be worth for now.

But I'm not requiring email confirmation to use the demo. Feel free to just use any random email to try it out (e.g. whatever42@blabla.com).

That's really great feedback, thanks!

Yes, always! Feel free to share them here, on GitHub [1] or send me an email at will@zoonk.org.

[1] https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/discussions

I think first-time creators is a better bet. They're more willing to try something new like UneeBee and more motivated to improve the product as well, so we can grow together.

Of course, experienced creators are welcome too but they already have an audience and usually play safe, so I understand why they wouldn't want to bet on UneeBee. First-time creators have nothing to lose, so it's a win-win situation. :)

Personally, I think they serve different needs. I see Moodle and Opigno as great tools for traditional learning methods (video and text based).

I struggle with that kind of learning experience and I think I'm not alone. Even using something like H5P, the overall user experience is far from what Duolingo offers for language learning.

Plus, I find the overall UX too confusing. UneeBee is far from good but I hope it will have much better user experience than traditional learning tools.

My vision for the long-term is to make it more practical too: A hands-on tool where we can learn by doing and seeing how things work in real-life. That's very hard to accomplish on tools like Moodle and Opigno.

But, to be clear, I don't think (and I don't aim) to replace those tools. I think UneeBee (and its cloud offerings) will be an additional tool.

> Schools especially may use a learning platform for 10+ years, at least when authoring with H5P they are not stuck in a single platform anymore. What's your solution for this problem?

Tbh, I don't have a solution for this problem yet and I agree that's an issue. I think having an open plugin system like WordPress will help but I'm not sure how this would work yet. Always open to ideas.

Stability and basic functionality that allows to properly use UneeBee for the three products I want to create (orgs, schools and marketplace).

This can give you a better view on the planned roadmap: https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/projects/11/views/2

I don't have any external funding and I'm not employed, so I'm prioritizing functionality that can allow me to build a paid cloud product on top of it. I still need to pay my bills after all :)

Thank you! I've opened an issue for it: https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee.com/issues/1

I'll look into it later today.

Thanks. This is actually my first project using Elixir but I'm loving it!

> what kind of schools are you thinking of public private charter?

Initially, private schools because adoption is easier. But, long-term, I'd like to help public schools too.

> do teachers create their own content? I thought the content always came from a tie up of the school to a publisher that supplies all of it. It's hard to supplant publishers in grade school IIUC.

Teachers can create their own content, if they want to. Based on my experience talking to teachers, though, they prefer when the content is already created because they don't have much time to do it.

At some point, I'll probably look into partnering with publishers. I think this will help distribution because it's pretty hard to sell learning materials directly to schools.

In some places it's more flexible, though. I'm constantly talking to teachers and school managers to see how we can make it work but I'm foreseeing some roadblocks. I think Educasso will take a bit longer to reach the market.

Thank you for reporting this issue. I'll look into it. If possible, please can you share what phone and browser are you using?

LibreLingo is great but they focus on language learning only. My idea is to go beyond language and build an app that allows us to learn anything using interactive lessons.

Eventually, I want to have a plugin system to have different lesson types for other subjects.

Plus, I'm going to use UneeBee to offer cloud products for enterprise, school, and creators. It will get much more complex than LibreLingo's current scope.

I'm actually new to the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem. This is my first project using it. I wanted a full-stack framework that allowed me to move really fast but I also wanted to have a nice user experience (similar to single-page applications) and good performance to avoid spending too much on servers.

I found Phoenix [1] and I loved it! I've been very productive using it. I'm finding LiveView to have a very good UX, almost as good as a single-page application.

And I'm quite impressed with the performance. For this demo, I'm using the cheapest machine on fly.io. Peak usage was 184MB RAM and 8% CPU (most of the time it's under 3%).

[1] https://www.phoenixframework.org/

Nice! Interestingly, I actually started learning Finnish on Duolingo last week :)

> it might be more sustainable if courses were stored in a version controllable medium to facilitate multiple collaborators

My initial thought was to actually use GitHub to store the content. Either on Markdown or JSON - to have some version control. I like how Exercism [1] does it. But I thought it would be hard for teachers - unfamiliar with Git - to update lessons.

Then, I thought about implementing a version control system for the project but I felt I was overcomplicating things for an MVP. But I like the idea of having some kind of version control to improve collaboration.

[1] https://exercism.org/

There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for each course. It's pretty basic right now:

- You can add multiple question. - Each question can have some content, one image and multiple options users can select. - Each option can have a title, an image and a feedback displayed to users when they select/confirm that option.

I want to add an option to import/export JSON. It's actually on the roadmap for v1:

- https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/41 - https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/40

In the future, I also want to implement some kind of plugin system because certain subjects require a different learning style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I need to think about it.

Very good points, thank you! Yeah, I played a little bit with animations but I didn't manage to make them right. I think I kept one when the lesson is completed but I recognize it's really bad. I think I'm going to remove it.

Totally agree I need to focus more on the course output and overall learner experience.

Eventually, yes. Not sure if I'll be able to implement it in time for v1, though.

It's not from YC but this Tech Nonprofit Playbook is pretty useful: https://www.ffwd.org/playbook/

You're very fortunate, indeed. :) It's very frustrating when you can't find a job aligned with your values. Tbh, one of the reasons I've decided to create zoonk.org (my current side project) was because I couldn't get a job at Khan Academy or Wikimedia.

Tbh, I often wonder the same thing. I've been using the Next.js + Firebase + Zeit stack lately and I can tell you: it's been a great experience so far. It's really easy to manage, especially as a solo dev.

As "jmnicolas" mentioned, though, I think "The Boring Stack" is often the best choice. Don't spend too much time on what the "thought leaders" on Twitter saying. Just use whatever makes you move faster to get shit done. Once you have some paying customers, you can always go back and change things.

I think the most important thing as a solo dev is just understanding what your possible customers need. You can do that using whatever tools work for you.

Thanks for your feedback! We're preparing a video. Hopefully, it will be online soon. :)

Thanks! Your feedback was very helpful. I'll think about ways for improving it.

I've just added a "try it free" button where you can create a demo story. I hope it helps. :)

Thanks, we'll fix it. Our video isn't ready yet but we just enabled a demo story where you can try it by yourself (just click on the "try it free" button). I hope it helps.

Thanks, Tom. Good point!

One more reason to support them. Even if you don't always agree with their opinions, it's nice to move away from commercial journalism and keep things as open and transparent as possible.

There are two pieces of advice I never forgot:

The first one isn't actually an advice but a friend once told me this: "We start dying when we stop being a child."

There are many things behind that advice. When we're kids we're always curious, we ask questions, we seek answers, we don't care about making mistakes, we're spontaneous, etc. I could list dozens of things. At some point in life, we stop doing those things. We stop being a kid. We stop having all those dreams we once had. That's when we begin to slowly die. In this world of grow ups fighting each other because of stupid things, I'm always trying to remind me myself to never stop being a child.

The second one is related to the Nonviolent Communication approach by Marshall Rosenberg. There's always a big difference between what someone tells us and what we understand. Most of the time we implicitly make a judgment about others' actions and that judgment is just something from our mind. Many times we get offended (or upset) by something we don't realize the other person had no intentions whatsoever to offend or upset us. In the end, it's actually an exercise of empathy: if something is upsetting or offending you, figure out why before engaging in a useless fight with someone else.

It's always hard to give advice to someone - and even harder giving advice to someone you don't even know. That said, I think if you came here is because, deep down, you already know the answer and you're just looking for "validation" to do it. ;)

If you're feeling you'd be happier doing something else (and have the financial means to support yourself), just do it. Of course, it's harder when you also have a family to support but just have an honest talk to them and tell them how you're feeling. They'll probably support your decision.

It's a cliché but it's so true: life's too short to waste time doing something when our mind tells us we should be doing something else. That doesn't have to be something definitive either. Just try out something for a year or two and, if things don't work out, you can always find a new job (or maybe even go back to yours). ;)

I think many people here would like as fortunate as you are to have enough savings to quit their jobs and do something they're truly passionate about. You've worked hard to reach this point. Enjoy it! :)