Why I Built My Own Teacher Apps

I'm a Grade 5 teacher in rural Victoria, a dad to two girls (5 and 3), and somewhere along the way I accidentally became an app developer. That last part still feels strange to type.

It Started With a Spreadsheet Problem

Every year, our school runs athletics and swimming carnivals. I'd been the one recording results using a spreadsheet I'd cobbled together. It worked, technically. But it was clunky, took forever, and on carnival day I'd be hunched over a laptop trying not to keep up with the endless result sheets flying my way.

I'd been tinkering with tech for years, self-teaching bits of code, trying out edtech tools, generally being the person on staff who is happy to try new ideas or programs. When AI tools started getting genuinely useful, I dove in. Not because I'm some tech evangelist, but because I'm a teacher with not enough hours in the day, and anything that cuts admin time is worth exploring.

So I thought: what if I just... built something better than my spreadsheet?

That first carnival app was rough. But it worked. And more importantly, it was mine. I understood how it functioned, I could fix it when it broke, and I could make it do exactly what our school needed. No subscription fees, no features I'd never use, no waiting for a support ticket response.

That's when things got a bit out of hand.

The Ideas Wouldn't Stop

Once you solve one problem with an app, you start seeing problems everywhere. Not in a pessimistic way, more like, "hang on, this annoying thing I do every week... could that be easier?"

Spelling tests were a big one. I've always wanted a decent digital spelling test app for my class. The kids could hear the word, attempt it, and I wouldn't have to mark thirty papers while also running guided reading groups (RIP reading groups, but that's another post). But every app I found either cost more than I wanted to pay or was bloated with features I didn't need. So I started building SpellTally.

Then there was behaviour tracking. My school had PD on logging incidents and commendations into our LMS. The idea was solid: keep records, spot patterns, have documentation when you need it. The reality? Nobody was going to be doing it regularly, myself included. And I get it. When a kid calls out during maths for the fourth time that lesson, the last thing I want to do is navigate to my laptop, log into a clunky system, find the right form, fill in twelve fields, and submit. By the time I've done that, I've lost the moment and my patience.

So I made TrackTally. It's offline-first, which matters because school Wi-Fi is... school Wi-Fi. You tap a few categories (on your phone, tablet or laptop), leave an optional note if you want, and you're done in seconds. It syncs when it syncs. The point is that logging something takes less effort.

I tested it with my own class last term. It actually worked. I was tracking things I never would have bothered recording before. And honestly? That's when I got a bit addicted.

Building in the Cracks of the Day

I should be clear: I'm not doing this instead of teaching. I'm doing this around teaching. Early mornings, after the kids are in bed, weekends when I can steal an hour. I'm using AI coding tools heavily, I'm not pretending to be a software engineer. But I'm learning as I go, understanding my codebases more each time, and building things that actually run.

Right now SpellTally is nearly ready for other teachers to use. TrackTally is in pilot mode with my own class. CheckTally, a formative assessment tracker, is the one I'm probably most satisfied with. And TebTally Pro is slowly becoming a dashboard that pulls all my classroom tools together. There are others brewing too, a class placement tool, a house points tracker. Ideas keep coming faster than I can build them.

The umbrella for all of this is TebTally. I set up a sole trader ABN, got the domain, and now I've apparently got a "brand."

The Honest Truth

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you about my grand vision and how these apps are going to revolutionise education. I'm not going to do that.

The honest truth? I don't know if anyone else will use these. I built them because I needed them. I've been using them with my own class, and I'll keep using them next year when I move to Grade 4. If it's just me forever, that's fine. I've already saved myself time.

But I'd love it if other teachers found them useful too. I know how it feels to be drowning in admin, to spend your Sunday afternoon doing things that should take five minutes but somehow take an hour. If something I've built helps one other teacher get home a bit earlier or feel a bit less overwhelmed, that would genuinely make my day.

I'm not trying to build the next big edtech startup. I'm a teacher who made some tools, and I'm putting them out there to see if they help. If they do, great. Any money that comes in goes straight back into development, there's only so far you can get on free hosting plans.

What's Next

I'm aiming to have SpellTally, CheckTally, and TebTally Pro ready for other teachers to try by late January. That timing's deliberate, it's when we're all mentally gearing up for the new year, thinking about what we want to do differently.

I'll be sharing more here as I go. What I'm building, what's working, what's failing spectacularly. If you're a teacher who's ever thought "there has to be a better way to do this," hopefully some of it resonates.