BookBaker

BookBaker uses generative AI to create entire customized books or textbooks in minutes—or thousands of different worksheets at a time—at 99% less cost than traditional publishers. Users simply select a subject, grade level, and enter a prompt for the book they want to create. BookBaker then generates a sample table of contents, which users can customize as much or as little as they like. Users can choose to include images, sidebar content, and other book or textbook features. All content can be aligned to standards and generated in any language. Users can edit, download, and freely share their creations with millions of people. BookBaker is an instructional tool, co-author, researcher, instructional designer, question and answer generator, translator, proofreader, and editor, all in one.

With BookBaker, teachers can create highly customized worksheets and books that meet the specific needs and interests of their students, incorporating any kind of multimedia assessment to better engage their students. Assessments can include videos, sound files, multiple-choice, and short-answer questions. Students can respond to these assessments in multimedia formats, such as voice clips or videos. This flexibility allows for a richer, more engaging learning experience.

This summer, BookBaker is launching fiction, including Choose Your Own Adventure™-style game books. These interactive books, designed for multiplayer classroom use, allow teachers to craft shared narratives in which each student plays a role. For instance, in a story created by a teacher set in ancient Egypt, students must work together to navigate the plot and make decisions that impact the storyline, such as choosing construction methods for pyramid scaffolding or determining travel routes to Alexandria. At the end of each section, there are questions (or assessment items) that students must work through together. These assessment items determine where the story goes next. These decisions make learning interactive, fostering critical thinking and collaboration among students and include real-time assessment and potential learning experiences from incorrect answers.

Currently, BookBaker supports the creation of nonfiction books and textbooks in all subjects, except math, in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hindi. By the end of the summer, we expect to launch a worksheet generator as well as question generators to fully support math and science, and to introduce fiction capabilities.

Since the 1980s, self-reported reading rates have declined by as much as 50%, likely due to the popularity of computer games. Black and Latino learners are almost twice as likely to score below basic reading levels as their white peers, with 80% of 4th graders in poverty not reading at grade level. Our solution transforms reading into an interactive, game-like experience, embedding assessments within engaging narratives that students help create. This approach not only makes reading more personalized but also improves learning outcomes by immersing students in stories where they make decisions that influence the plot.

In addition to the interactive, assessment-filled Choose Your Own Adventure™-style books, BookBaker enables the quick creation of culturally relevant, customized educational materials that resonate with students’ interests and are accessible in their language and at their reading level. For instance, teachers can intertwine chapters from popular novels with thematic learning segments, as one teacher did by combining "Lord of the Flies" analysis with how-to chapters on survival skills, to craft compelling educational experiences. These materials can be tailored to align with state standards and students' lexile levels, ensuring they are both engaging and educational. 

The core feature of BookBaker is creating customized material in minutes. Teachers will be able to create content and assessment that meet the needs of all learners and make this material accessible to learners of varying abilities and backgrounds. What used to take days to create — differentiated, customized materials — can now be produced in minutes for a whole classroom of learners. Culturally relevant materials and assessment items are crucial for priority learners, and BookBaker enables this at 1% the cost of traditional materials.

Later this year, BookBaker will launch multi-media assessments embedded into customized textbooks, books, and worksheets. Assessments can include videos, sound files, multiple-choice, short-answer questions, etc. Students can respond to these assessments in multimedia formats, such as voice clips or videos. This flexibility not only enriches the learning experience but also makes it more engaging. By significantly reducing the time and cost associated with creating differentiated, customized materials, BookBaker empowers educators to meet the diverse needs of learners, especially priority learners, effectively.

José Ferreira, the CEO of AllCourse and project lead, has spent his entire career at the intersection of AI and education. He is the founder of Knewton, which used machine learning AI to generate unique, real-time-updating learning recommendations for each student using the combined proficiency data of millions of other students. He then founded Bakpax, which used a computer vision AI to read student handwriting (including figures and graphs) and convert it to interactive digital objects, then used machine learning to teach itself how to grade — the result of which was an app that could instantly grade all handwritten work less than a sentence long, giving students instant feedback and saving teachers 20-30 hours/month.

Born in South Africa and partly raised in Mozambique, José is keenly aware of the transformational power of education to improve individual lives — and the fortunes of nations. Jose passionately believes that students everywhere should have access to high-quality learning materials regardless of socio-economic status. With tools like BookBaker, he wants to use AI to deliver high-quality learning experiences to kids worldwide at ultra low cost. This is particularly crucial in low-income neighborhoods and the developing world — environments in dire need of more/better/cheaper learning materials.

The BookBaker team consists of professionals with rich backgrounds in education, gaming, and AI. The team includes a number of former and current teachers who understand the types of materials needed to support diverse learners. Other team members have backgrounds in video and educational games and have a passion for making learning fun and interactive. 

As BookBaker is in its beginning stages, we are meeting with districts and educational organizations across the country who are planning to use BookBaker to create customized content for the next school year. We are keeping these pilot partners abreast of any exciting new developments and are actively seeking feedback from them about their needs. This informs our roadmap moving forward.

BookBaker launched in February 2024 and has already been used to create over 1000 books by paying customers who discovered the platform through Google Ads, organic search, shared book links, or word of mouth. As of now, BookBaker enables users to create nonfiction books and textbooks in any subject (full support for math is coming this summer), incorporating images, sidebar content, review questions, and answers in four major languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hindi (we expect to be in over 100 languages by year-end). Users can edit their books, share them freely, and export to ePUB or PDF.

Every US state and 201 other countries around the world

In 2021, a single California school district spent $147 million on new textbooks. BookBaker is transforming this economic scenario by enabling educators to create customized materials, including assessment items, in minutes at just 1% of the cost of traditional resources. This capability makes high-quality education more accessible, particularly in underserved areas, by allowing the rapid and inexpensive creation of learning materials in any language.

Additionally, BookBaker introduces a groundbreaking interactive, collaborative approach to assessment with its Choose Your Own Adventure™-style game books. These "books" are not only narratives chosen by students, where each participant plays a role, but they also provide real-time, interactive assessments. In these assessments, students actively engage and influence the course of the storyline. This novel approach not only draws kids into reading but also allows them to tackle assessment items together. As they journey through the story, students gain a deeper understanding of the material, making the learning process both immersive and educational.

The core AI technology powering BookBaker primarily involves Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML), facilitated by OpenAI's advanced models. These AI subdomains enable the generation of textual content and structuring of educational materials, such as books and worksheets, in multiple languages. The technology is adept at understanding and generating text, ensuring that the content produced aligns with specific educational standards and user inputs.

Additionally, as we plan to enhance our service, we are looking to integrate other AI models like Claude, Llama, video generators like SORA, and sound generators, which will expand our capabilities in generating more diverse and sophisticated content. This future integration aims to leverage different strengths of various AI technologies to improve the adaptability and quality of the educational materials produced.

BookBaker’s solution is not entirely self-sufficient; it relies on third-party AI models provided by OpenAI, and potentially other AI service providers in the future, to handle complex NLP tasks.

On the technological front, our user interface is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, allowing educators and learners to easily customize their educational content. The frontend is built using modern web development technologies, ensuring a seamless experience for users to interact with our AI features, such as content customization and real-time editing.

Before the public release of BookBaker in 2024, we conducted a rigorous testing phase with four teachers who created hundreds of books, instructional materials, and assessments using our platform. These materials spanned various subjects, grade levels, and reading levels, ensuring the accuracy and appropriateness of the content. Since the official launch, thousands of books, including those with integrated assessment items, have been created by users, teachers, and educational institutions nationwide. You can explore our fully built interface and see how it works here.

At BookBaker, we are deeply committed to ensuring equity in our AI implementation to make high-quality educational materials accessible to all, particularly for marginalized communities such as Black and Latino learners and those experiencing poverty. To tackle algorithmic bias, we began by working with a diverse team of educators from across the country during our initial testing phase. This allowed us to monitor our results closely and ensure that no biased or harmful material was generated.

Engagement with educators, districts, and education leaders from diverse backgrounds forms a cornerstone of our development process. This direct feedback is invaluable for refining our AI to meet the specific needs of underserved groups effectively. Our platform's adaptive learning technologies further personalize learning experiences, ensuring that every student can access content that matches their individual learning pace and level.