About Yarnia
I'm Chris Schmidt. I built Yarnia with my daughter. It started as a fun side project, and we decided to offer it to everyone.
I'm a builder at heart. I've spent the last 15+ years at Adobe and Dell as a consultant, engineer and third-party service provider of Adobe products, supporting Fortune 500 companies and government organizations.
How it started
My daughter is a COVID baby, and she started learning to read right as AI was changing what software can do.
We were lucky to send her to a school that really emphasized reading, and it showed. Every couple of weeks she came home with a new short story tailored to what she was learning. We read those books together every night. Before long she could recite them without looking at the words, and so could I. We were both ready for something new.
I figured I could build on that. So I left Adobe, and I've been building Yarnia with her ever since.
What I heard from teachers
With my daughter starting kindergarten, education became a big interest of mine, and a regular debate in our house. A lot of people in my circle are teachers, so I asked them how their schools deliver education.
I came away thinking there was room for change. The tools and techniques in place were well behind what I've seen in the tech industry, and adopting anything new is hard when schools are short on resources. The ideas behind Yarnia aren't new. Families can get this kind of help today, but in my experience it comes at a significant cost. I want every kid to have access to these tools at a price that doesn't cost as much as a college education.
Why now
Over the last few years I watched AI get very good at helping people learn and make sense of information. I also watched where that value went. Most of it was landing inside companies, making them bigger and better at what they already do.
AI is about to flip that, the same way YouTube did for news. Big news organizations are in decline, and YouTube creators are producing long-form, in-depth reporting that helps people really understand what is going on in the world. They do it with small teams and small budgets, and they reach massive audiences with arguably a better product.
AI can do the same for software and education. You no longer need millions of dollars and hundreds of engineers to build something useful. The barrier to entry has dropped. I see that as an opportunity for all of us, not just Big Tech, and it's how Yarnia became possible.
What Yarnia does
Yarnia and Yarnie, our companion for learning with your child, take your child's idea for a story and write it using the letter sounds and words they've learned so far.
Your child is part of making the book, too. The pictures are black-and-white line art, and every one of them becomes a coloring page. Kids can color right in the app, or print the story and color it with crayons at the kitchen table. When they're done, they have a book they helped create and can share with family.
Every word in the story can be tapped to hear it read aloud, so your child can learn the words they don't know yet.
At the early reading levels, your child is introduced to the story's pattern before reading, and every story is checked against the patterns they've been taught before they see it.
As your child reads, we watch for where they might be struggling. A teacher-style planner uses that to shape the next story.
Where we're headed
It's still early for Yarnia, and we have plenty of ideas for where it goes next. At its simplest, we want to help your child create something they're happy to share, while learning to be a better reader along the way.
If you're a parent or a teacher and have thoughts, I'd like to hear them at [email protected].
Chris Schmidt, founder