Many of you may have noticed that it has been a while since there was a Wurkbuk development update. A lot has changed in the landscape of VLEs and LMSs over the last few years, one of which is the introduction of AI into education technology. One of the important factors of the development of Wurkbuk was that it would bring something unique to the edtech landscape. With hundreds of thousands of edtech tools already out there, I didn't want Wurkbuk to just be a duplicate of something that was already there. It needed to provide a meaningful solution to problems that educators were having. When Wurkbuk was being developed, I strongly believed that this was the case. Even though now, it pretty much still is, the introduction of AI changes things. So I have made a concious effort to step back from development of Wurkbuk until I see how it can be of real benefit to educators....
In the mean time, I have dived head first into the world of AI development, education and research, writing curriculum materials for AI literacy, advising on AI use within the education sector and also developing other tools I feel are more beneficial and have gained traction on their own right. One of these tools is SpellMe, an accessible spelling practice app for primary aged learners, with carefully selected, thoughtful AI features where necessary.
Wurkbuk will remain in its current Beta 3.5 state, accessible from this website. However, I would advise against full whole school use, as the architecture is based on a no longer updated framework. As a result, I cannot guarantee performance or security. Beta 4 would have been the final Beta, which would have used the most up-to-date technology. If you are still interested in checking it out, please feel free to do so via the Demo links or register for an account of your own and give it a whirl. I'm still open to collaboration if there is interest, and am strongly considering making the project open source.
I fully intend to revisit this when the edtech landscape and AIs future in it becomes more stable and clear, and I hope that won't be too long in the future.