Ethel

Download Ethel.

Free for students, and free to keep using — there is no account to create and nothing to pay. Pick the one that matches what you are putting her on.

Download it once over wi-fi if you can. After that she never needs the network again, so you can copy the same file to a friend by Bluetooth, ShareIt or a memory card — that is encouraged.

This is a closed beta, and a test run.

What that means for you

This build went out to a small group so that things could break in front of real students rather than in front of a whole university. Some courses are thin, nothing has been checked by a subject teacher yet, and the app has been run on a simulated phone far more than on a real one. If something is wrong, that is exactly what I want to hear.

This build works for two weeks

It runs until the end of 5 October 2026. After that it stops teaching and shows a page saying the beta has ended — nothing is deleted, and your students and progress stay on the device. Come back here for the newer build and install it over this one; everything will be where you left it.

Installing takes about two minutes.

On an Android phone or tablet

  1. Download the file above. It lands in your Downloads folder.
  2. Tap it. The phone asks whether to allow installing from this source — say yes. That prompt is normal for anything that did not come from the Play Store.
  3. Open Ethel. The first launch is slow, because she is unpacking 251 courses onto the phone. She tells you so on screen. Every launch after that is quick.
  4. Create a student — a name and a four-digit PIN. It stays on that phone, and nothing is sent anywhere.

On a Windows, Mac or Linux laptop

  1. Check you have Python 3.10 or newer. In a terminal, run python --version. If you do not have it, install it from python.org first.
  2. Unzip the file anywhere you like.
  3. Start her. On Windows, double-click run.bat. On Mac or Linux, run python serve.py.
  4. A browser opens at 127.0.0.1:8770. If it does not, type that address in yourself. It only works on your own machine — nothing is served to the network.

To stop her, close the window or press Ctrl+C. Your progress is saved on the machine.

Two honest notes about the Android build

  • Your phone may warn you about the app, because this test build is signed with a development key rather than a Play Store one. That is expected for a beta.
  • Android lists internet access as a permission. Ethel uses it to talk to herself: she runs a tiny web server inside the app, and Android will not let her open it — even just for her own use — without that permission. Her own airlock blocks anything trying to leave the phone, and the System check page shows you whether it is engaged and whether anything has ever tried.

Once she is running.

Things worth trying

  1. Take the placement test if she offers one, and notice whether the questions track how you are doing.
  2. Open a lesson and go through it properly — hook, explanation, a check after each piece, a worked example, then practice.
  3. Get a question wrong on purpose. She should tell you why your answer was wrong, not just mark it. Where she recognises a common mistake, she explains that one and asks again. If she ever marks you wrong with no reason at all, that is a bug.
  4. Ask her something off-topic in the Ask box. She should say she does not know rather than invent something.
  5. Open System check at the bottom of the menu to see what she can and cannot do on your device.

What I most want to hear

  • Anywhere she states something as fact that you know is wrong.

  • Anywhere it feels like she is testing you instead of teaching you.

  • Wording that would not make sense to a learner in Zambia.

  • Anything that simply does not work — especially on a real handset, since most testing so far has been on a simulated one.

Send it to mweeletaurai@gmail.com. A one-line “this screen froze” is genuinely useful.

What is still rough.

  • Nothing has been reviewed by a subject teacher. Most of the 251 courses are starter packs — one authored lesson so the course is not empty. The app labels them as provisional and says plainly that they are not the institution’s published syllabus.
  • The Android app has mostly been tested on an emulator. It has been installed, opened and used far enough to enrol on a programme and serve a lesson, but on simulated hardware.
  • The Android build is signed with a debug key, which is right for testing and not suitable for the Play Store.
  • The voice is the device's own. Ethel reads lessons aloud using your phone's or your laptop's own speech, with nothing extra to install. It is a plain robotic voice rather than a warm one, and it can only speak the languages your device already has — which in practice means English. Bemba and Lozi need the separate voice files, and until then she stays silent in those rather than reading them in an English voice.
  • The Bemba and Lozi translations are drafts except where a pack says a person reviewed them. Every unreviewed line is marked.

Updates land here.

When there is a new build, this page carries it and the newest sits at the top. There is no auto-update in the beta — check back, download the new file and install it over the old one. Your students and progress stay where they are.