Yo Bro: Words & Maths

Yo Bro is a practice app for school, made for one boy and then finished properly. Photograph the word list his teacher handed out, check what the camera read, and practise it. Getting a list in • Photograph the sheet from school. The scanner straightens it, reads the words on the phone, works out which column is which, and shows you what it read so you can fix what the camera got wrong. • Or type one in. Or import a CSV. Or scan a friend's list off their screen — a whole list travels inside a QR code, no account and no internet. Eight ways to practise • Test — type the answer. • Practice test — every word once, the result at the end. • Multiple choice — pick one of four. • Learn — the same word twice: choose it, then write it. • Spelling — the word shows for three seconds, then goes. • Hints — letters on request, at the price of a second try. • Dictation — the word is spoken, never shown. • Flashcards — think, turn the card, say whether you had it. A few minutes a day, so it sticks. Every word you have practised comes back after a day, then three, a week, a fortnight and five weeks — and straight back to the start when you get it wrong. The Today card gathers the ones that are due. Set the test date and those words come first. Marking that does not punish the wrong things. Alternatives, optional bits like "(to) walk", a missing article or accent — counted, and pointed out. One typo is "almost". Maths, and all of it free. Six subjects — fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, negative numbers and basic algebra — in thirty-three chapters. Every chapter explains itself first, with a drawing that shows why the method works: a bar, a hundred grid, a thermometer. Then practice, where a hint gives the next step rather than the answer, and a test with no hints and the results at the end. A wrong answer gets the reason it was wrong. Sums as well. Plus, minus, times and divided by, with the blank anywhere: 1 + 1 = ?, 2 + ? = 5, ? + 7 = 10. Four levels, each a different skill rather than a longer number, and the tables from 1 to 12. Pictures, for a child who is only just reading. 354 drawings in fourteen sets, or by how hard the word is to read in that language. A lesson is the pictures you pick, and there are seven ways of asking — from choosing the word to laying out its letters and filling in the missing sound. Battle, in the same room. One phone holds the list and shows a code; the others scan it to join, and the board moves as they answer. Players are animals rather than names, so there is nothing to type and nothing to moderate. Up to 32 of you, and no server: nothing leaves the room. 214 badges, drawn by hand, all kept on the phone: streaks, flawless rounds, days practised, one per way of practising, one per sum, one per maths subject, one for every season of the year. Print it. The words in four columns like the sheet from school, with a line for the date and a code to scan the list back in — or the same sheet with the answers left off, as Friday's test. From a list of pictures: worksheets to draw the line, write the word or circle the right spelling, and a board game to play at the table. Made to be read. Light or dark, and a font for children with dyslexia (OpenDyslexic) on a switch, for the app and for anything it prints. A list can be in sixteen languages, the app speaks all sixteen, and the phone reads the words aloud in any of them. No account. No advertising. No tracking. Three lists are free, along with three ways of practising, the first level of every sum, three sets of pictures — and the whole of maths. Yo Bro Pro unlocks the rest, by the year or by the month, and ends whenever you cancel it. Joining someone else's battle is always free.