How Strew Selectively Uses AI to Support Great Home Education
In 2026 there are so many companies seeking to spin the perception of their products that we’re bombarded with falsehoods and manipulated language; even before we start to figure out what part AI is going to play in future society.
With this in mind we are doubling down on our principles.
Cars made transport easier. The internet connected everyone. Digital devices gave us access to a trillion dopamine opportunities, (but they are great for organising home ed!)
AI change builds on all change before it.
But we’re not fully onboard with all of this change. As home educating parents know, defaulting to the mainstream approach often fails us as people. It’s the same with AI. We are not squashing AI into every corner of Strew. It will always be optional. It will always be clear. It will always be meaningful.
AI is Everywhere
We don’t love about the haphazard way AI has grown is how it’s started to bleed into everything.
Do we really need AI-equipped pet food dispensers?
…and that’s just the products that claim AI features; in apps, you might not even realise you’re using it, (or it’s using you). Social media companies are deep down this path; they use AI to support ads which sell you things better, to choose what to show you, and what not to show you.
Even my local community groups have started putting up posters with unnecessarily crisp illustrations.
Strew AI: Always Optional
AI features should always be optional.
For those who want nothing to do with artificial intelligence, all software should let you opt out. Like Strew.
The Strew app is largely a traditional app. You add details, you manage things with tags. It does use AI (optionally) to help analyse learning from activities.
Home ed parents know their children the best, and they themselves are supremely placed to reflect on their child’s development.
Strew only seeks to support and enrich that. If you have Learning Insights turned on, Strew’s AI will do a stellar job at that alone. It won’t do anything else. It’s not wired in throughout the app.
This is how we recommend you use AI, (if you do): to enhance what you’re already doing, to further your own expression or to reduce laborious elements.
Strew AI: Always Transparent
It’s hard to deny the incredible help AI can be for us in achieving our goals. But if we let it do everything we take away our opportunity to express ourselves.
AI use should be clear cut.
We pledge to always be transparent with what Strew uses AI for. As of this post, here’s where AI sits inside the Strew App:
- No AI (most of the app):
- Activity feed
- Tagging
- Photograph storage
- Barcode Scanner
- Optional AI Features:
- Learning Insights
Strew AI: Consistently Protecting Users Identities & Data
Our approach starts with privacy.
Nothing is as important as protecting our children in this complex modern world.
Increasingly the freedom we had as kids has been eroded. Much of our everyday lives create data-points in the cloud which could be used for good or evil.
That’s why we started Strew to be on-device only.
That’s why we’ve written Strew to do everything it can to never leak names or sensitive information, (e.g. if you choose to use AI for Learning Insights, all names are removed before querying AI).
As Strew has developed it’s become clear that for many of you it’s impractical to be limited to recording home ed stuff on only one device. We get it. We’re working on a secure, private solution to this that we call ‘cloud-sync’.
Cloud-sync development is an example of our commitment to absolute best-possible security & privacy in Strew. We probably could have rushed out a working version; but that’s not good enough. We want this to be undoubtedly safe for families to use…this is why it’s taking us a while to get it out 😀
…and for the record, it’ll always be optional.
The Strew AI Home Education Pledge
With that all said, here is our firm pledge as humans that work to make tools to make home education easier.
We promise to:
- Always keep AI optional
- Always keep AI transparent
- Never use AI for trivial things
- Never expose children to AI without clear guide rails (we don’t do this anyway)
(… and just so you know, we’re planting trees to offset AI usage and generally to do what good we can, because…)
…In The End, We Can’t Change It
As a movement, home education is changing the world. Home ed produces some of the most capable, moral, philosophically sound humans we’ve met. It’s fantastic.
Activism is important, but the scale of this planetary change is bonkers.
Even if all home-ed people boycotted all labelled AI products (many other products will use it without saying so), it won’t economically affect this.
At first this made us feel powerless, frustrated, anxious.
But remembering our Stoic philosophy we can squarely put this into the ‘can’t meaningfully affect it’ category, which re-empowers us to decide if and how we will use it.
We aim to steward selective, really good use of AI for the betterment of our lives, strongly blocking it where it seeks to remove our expression, always being transparent, and promoting information which empowers parents to make safe choices.
What’s your take?
Where do you use AI? Do you absolutely hate it? How do you see AI being used well in Home ed? Is there any way we at Strew can support you in your own journey with it?
We’d love to hear your take on facebook.
P.S. No AI was used in the writing of this post 🙂