Building An App

​A soft Launch of app.artedguru.com , currently in beta testing mode.

Ready to try it? Visit the ArtEdGuru Lesson Generator App page to learn more, then generate your first lesson free at app.artedguru.com

​As we enter this era of AI, something I have noticed is that teachers are beginning to explore the use of AI in generating lesson ideas. Often they end up with disappointing “AI Slop,” built without the experience of actually being in a classroom, or culled from obvious but thin resources.
 
For the past few months, I have been building a database with over 1000 of my intercurricular lessons created over nearly 40 years, along with my books, video transcripts, and blog content to build a R.A.G. (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) a software framework that Large Language Models (LLMs) use by fetching up-to-date or private data.
 
I have ZERO experience coding, but I am aware that Claude AI is a powerful tool that can walk you through a complicated process. I can communicate with Claude in plain English, and if I get lost, I can say so, and it will simplify information for me and break normal coding steps into tiny bites. I certainly know how to copy and paste, and that’s 80% of what I am doing. Here you can see a little of that coding work below. 

Claude walks me through setting up accounts. It will even point me to free resources before we use anything that requires payment. (I do have a paid Claude account, as well as ChatGPT.) When I get lost or frustrated, I send it screenshots, LOTS of screenshots, and it will tell me where to navigate and what to click. Sometimes it’s scary. Why am I trusting this “thing?!?” I am using programs I have no idea what they actually do, but Claude holds my hand—virtually. You can see that in my chats below.

It has not been smooth. At a critical moment, the preliminary app stopped working and kept giving errors. We made circles for 2 days, and I thought I would give up. Honestly, 6 to 8 hours of frustration. Then I asked Claude to write a complete statement about the problem and I copied it over to Chat GPT. Together, they solved the coding problem within 30 minutes, and we were back in business. They both have their strengths.
 
Originally, this was going to be an App for art educators, but I realized that for my entire career, I have been connecting art to math, geometry, science, literacy, chemistry, and more. I have a whole video series about that HERE. I even have a free poster (below) about this, you can download HERE on TPT. (I am even working on a student-facing version of the app that will be a more colorful experience to foster independent learning!)

I built the app so that ALL teachers of ALL subjects can generate art-connected lessons. That’s called STEM/STEAM education. These lessons can even be used to create Gold Standard PBL experiences! Research shows that the “A” in STEAM is a powerful tool that elevates STEM lessons into enduring ones. That “A,” the art, makes these experiences more personal, internal, expressive, and relevant to the student.
 
I encourage you to try the app out. It’s free! "Kick the tires," and use the feedback option to let me know if you like it, what’s problematic, what you wish it did, etc. I know as of May 1st, the links to PE and Theatre lessons are thin, but I am going to work on that this summer. My plan for app.artedguru.com is to keep it free through August or September of 2026. 

I understand that AI is controversial, and I have already gotten some pushback, people saying they don't want AI lessons, but I need to be clear, AI is not generating ANYTHING, it is used as a librarian or curator, pulling exclusively from my repository of resources faster than I can. 

For example, in my Facebook Group, someone will ask for a wire sculpture lesson, and I know I have one but forget when I posted it, and I may actually have 3 different posts on wire sculpture, a video or three, and it may be in one of my books too. The app pulls ALL THOSE together into one spot for teachers to access. After nearly 40 years, it's hard to remember what files are where, and when I did them...
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You should see my desk! It's a wonder I know where anything is!!! ;-) 

​Every lesson you generate eats up data, and data is the new commodity in this age… Because the use of data actually costs me money for every lesson you generate, I’ll need to implement a small monthly fee in the spring (if the platform is “successful.”) Claude is suggesting we offer 3 free lessons and that the 4th will prompt a subscription portal for $8. This will be low enough to cover the data fees for nearly unlimited lesson generations and independent explorations for each subscriber. I hope I can offer a district plan too, so teachers do not have to use their own funds to subscribe. 

Below is a student-facing version, based on my choice board you can see and download for free HERE. It is currently password-protected until I am ready to release it. 

​For now, it’s “free to you.” Please use the feedback option to let me know how well it’s working for you and any glitches you notice (like if it always suggests the same thing or something off-topic). Think of that feedback as a “tip” for the free service I am offering.