A new home for learning Kasem: today's lesson, quick practice and a Kawuri that knows your lesson in Indigen World 0.1.21

The Learn tab in Indigen World used to open on a long trail of lesson buttons. In version 0.1.21 it opens on one calm screen that answers three questions: what should I learn now, what can I practise in two minutes, and am I keeping it up? Today's lesson picks up exactly where you left off. Review, Listen and Speak are one tap away. And Kawuri, the Indigen World guide, now knows which lesson and which word you are on when you ask it for help.

What is new at a glance

• Today's lesson: your next unfinished lesson, resumed at the question you left, with how far along you are.
• Review words, Listen and Speak: three short kinds of practice, built on the published Kasem dictionary.
• Word of the day: with a real speaker's recording when there is one, and an honest note when there is not.
• This week: a tick for every day you learned, and a three-day goal.
• Explore next: the units that come after the one you are in, with an illustration for each.
• Course: the whole course and the lesson trail, one tap away.
• Kawuri AI: opens knowing your course, unit, lesson and today's word.
• Kawuri videos can now have sound, and Kawuri can draw children in everyday scenes.

Today's lesson, right where you left it

The big card at the top is always your next unfinished lesson. It shows the unit, the lesson title, roughly how long it takes, and how many of its activities you have already answered. Tap Start lesson, or Continue if you have begun.

Every answer is saved the moment you check it. If a call comes in halfway through a lesson, close the app; next time you open Learn, the card says "3 of 4 activities" and Continue takes you straight back to question four. Your progress is kept on your phone, and in your account once you sign in, so it survives restarting the app and changing phones.

When you have met today's goal, the card still offers the next lesson and says so. If you have finished every published lesson, it offers a word review instead of pretending there is more.

Practice in two minutes

Under today's lesson are three small cards. Each one pays a little XP once a day, and each one counts towards today's goal.

Review words

A short flashcard review from the published Kasem dictionary. You see a word, say to yourself what it means, then reveal the meaning and choose Knew it or Still learning. A word you know comes back after a day, then two, four, eight and sixteen days; a word you are still learning comes back later in the same session. Words you have saved in the dictionary are offered first.

Listen

Listening practice uses only real recordings made by Kasem speakers. When there are enough recordings, it is a quiz: hear a word, pick its meaning. Right now very few words in the dictionary have been recorded, so Listen gives you the recordings that exist to listen to and repeat, and tells you why it is not a quiz yet. We would rather wait for real voices than fill the gap with a computer voice.

Speak

Speak has two parts, and each says plainly what it does:

• Say it in Kasem. Record the word, listen back, record again if you like, and send it for community review. No computer can yet check Kasem pronunciation accurately, so nothing here scores you. A person listens. You can also choose whether a good recording may become the word's pronunciation in the dictionary; it only does if the word has no recording yet.
• Say the meaning in English. Say what the word means, in English, and Kawuri checks your answer against the dictionary. English is the only language our speech-to-text supports, and this feedback is marked experimental.

Your microphone is only asked for when you press record, never when the screen opens.

Word of the day

The word of the day comes from the published dictionary. Tap the card to open the full entry: meaning, part of speech, example sentence, recording and where the word comes from. The play button plays a real recording when a speaker has made one.

Your week and your streak

The week card shows Monday to Sunday, with a gold tick on every day you learned, and celebrates when you reach three days. The flame at the top of the screen is your streak: the number of days in a row with a lesson or a practice. Tap it for your longest streak and to claim today's spark.

Days follow your own phone's clock, so a lesson finished late in the evening counts for that evening. Several lessons on the same day still count as one day, so your streak always means what it says.

Tap the bolt to see your XP, how much of the course you have finished, and your achievements. Tap the trophy to see what today's goal is made of: three activities, where every lesson you finish and every kind of practice counts once.

The whole course, one tap away

Tap Course beside "Learning Kasem" to see every unit, how many of its lessons you have finished, and the familiar trail of lesson buttons. Explore next, further down the Learn tab, shows the units after the one you are working on:

• An open unit takes you straight to its lessons.
• A locked unit tells you which unit to finish first, and how many lessons are left in it.
• A unit marked Soon is still being written and checked with Kasem speakers. We show it so you can see where the course is going, but we do not invent a lesson count for it.

The language selector is ready for more Indigenous languages. For now it offers Kasem.

Illustrations, drawn with care

The pictures on today's lesson and on the unit cards were made with Google's Gemini image models, known as Nano Banana, on Vertex AI. They were not made on your phone. Every one follows a house style written for the course: a warm painted look, the savanna and painted compounds of the Kassena homeland, everyday clothes, and people of every age shown with dignity. The style rules out masks, shrines, rituals, real people and any written text.

A picture of Kassena life drawn by a computer is still a picture about real people. So every course illustration starts as a draft, and reaches the app only after a person on the Indigen World team approves it. Each one is credited in the app as an AI illustration.

Kawuri knows where you are

The Kawuri AI button still floats above the tabs. Open it from Learn and Kawuri shows the course, unit and lesson you are on, and today's word, with four ready-made requests: Explain this word, Give me an example, Quiz me and Help me practise.

Kawuri is given the published lesson and the dictionary entry as verified material, and is told to use them first. When you ask for Kasem that is not in the dictionary or the course, it should say that it is not verified and suggest asking the community, instead of making something up. Kawuri never changes the dictionary or the course.

Kawuri videos can have sound

Kawuri's short videos were silent in the last update. Create video now has a Sound switch, on by default: the video comes with ambient sound, effects and music made alongside it. Turn it off for a silent clip when you want to add your own voice or music afterwards.

Any voices in the soundtrack are made by the AI, and they will not be speaking Kasem. The switch says so, and a video's details say whether it was made with sound. Sound does not use more of your daily video allowance.

Children in stories

Many stories have children in them. Kawuri can now draw children in everyday scenes such as families, school, play, farming and folktales. It still refuses anything that puts a child in a sexual, violent, abusive or frightening situation, and it still will not make pictures of real, identifiable people of any age.

For reviewers and editors

Two new desks are in the Indigen World admin console, under Learning:

• Illustrations: authorised editors describe a picture, choose a shape, a resolution and standard or best quality, and can add reference images or edit an earlier picture. Every request is checked for safety first, and the prompt, model, creator and time are recorded. Only an administrator can approve a picture and attach it to a unit, lesson or course.
• Pronunciations: reviewers listen to the recordings learners send from Speak, and approve or reject them with a note. An approved recording never replaces one the dictionary already has.

Not here yet

• Automatic Kasem pronunciation feedback. No speech model hears Kasem accurately yet, so a person reviews every recording.
• Listening quizzes start once at least four words have published recordings. Recording words in Speak or in Contribute helps.
• More units. Family & people, Food & home and Around town are shown as coming soon while their lessons are written and checked.
• More languages will appear in the language selector as their courses are published.

Also in this update

• The Learn tab's header, the tab bar and the Kawuri button move out of the way while you scroll down, and come back as soon as you scroll up.
• Pull down on the Learn tab to refresh the course. If you are offline, it keeps the copy saved on your phone and tells you.
• Fixed a bug where two things saved at the same moment, such as a review answer and finishing the review, could overwrite each other.