Three kinds of homework app
| What they do | Useful for | The limit at primary school | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apps that give the answer | You photograph an exercise and they show the solution | Checking working, mostly at secondary school | They do the work instead of the child |
| General practice apps | Exercises sorted by level and curriculum | Regular practice, often free | It isn’t the list the teacher set tonight |
| Single-subject apps | One thing, often done well: spellings, times tables… | A specific need | You need several for a week of homework |
None of them is ‘the best’ in absolute terms: it depends on what you need on a school night.
What Kamelo does, exactly
Kamelo starts from a photo of tonight’s homework: a line in the homework diary, a printed slip, a lesson. It works out which kind of homework it is, you check it, and your child practises for about ten minutes on exactly that content, with Kamelo, a little chameleon who changes colour with the subject.
- He never does the homework for your child: he reads out spellings, asks times tables and helps with learning a poem. The right answer only appears after your child has had a go, and anything missed comes back later.
- He doesn’t chat with your child: everything he says is written in advance.
- He shows nothing you haven’t checked.
- No ads, no timer by default, no leaderboards, no red.
Kamelo isn’t the only app that reads a photo of homework. What sets it apart: one photo leads to the right exercise among several kinds, a grown-up confirms every result, and the photo is deleted within 24 hours.
Who Kamelo is for
For parents of children in Year 1 to Year 6 who want a short, regular moment in the evening, on what the class is really working on: this week’s spellings, common exception words, the times table of the moment, the poem to learn, the lesson to revise, or practice for the Year 4 multiplication tables check.
Who it isn’t for
- Secondary school pupils: Kamelo isn’t designed for them.
- Written homework to hand in (a story to write, a worksheet to complete): Kamelo keeps it as a task to tick off, without doing it.
- Specialist support: if your child has real difficulty with reading or writing, talk to their teacher, the school’s special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) or your GP. Kamelo can help with practice; it doesn’t replace specialist support.