Why I built Pedagogo

Jonathan Constantine · 2026-06-01T11:33:09.731+00:00

70 slides.

That was the size of the powerpoint I was handed a couple of years ago when I was covering a 90-minute  class here in Dublin.

70 slides. For 90 minutes.

I looked at the slides, all theory, no activities and also no way I’d be able to do anything other than read the deck word for word from start to finish. I’d be bored delivering it, never mind the students.  There had to be a better way to deliver the session without everyone zoning out. 

This was my first trial of AI. I uploaded the slide deck  and asked it to flip the session and suggest an alternative approach to deliver the information over less slides and also making it more engaging. I looked for icebreakers, ways to flip the classroom so the students were actually researching and teaching each other, and ways to make dry theory more interesting.

The session worked. There were a few things to iron out but it showcased an opportunity to think about ways I could save myself time planning classes and admin in the future, the students were engaged, and I wasn't losing my mind.

But doing that week after week meant fighting with raw AI prompts, fixing hallucinations, and wasting hours trying to get the machine to understand higher education. I also had fun when discussing mixing and automation that I was talking about Pro Tools and mixing desks and not baking or machine line assembly.

Last summer, I decided to stop fighting the prompts and went down a rabbit hole. I wanted a tool where a tired lecturer could just upload an old slide deck, a syllabus, or a dry topic, and instantly get higher-ed-validated activity ideas, active learning strategies, and session wrappers.

I couldn't find it. So I built it.

It’s called Pedagogo.

I’m not here to "disrupt global education paradigms", I understand the backlash from the prospect of another AI tool. This has been created as a teaching assistant to help save you time on admin. It’s a straightforward, plug-and-play tool built by a lecturer, for lecturers.

Whether you need to generate a year long  scheme of work from a messy syllabus, get three quick active-learning ideas for a dry topic, or turn a grading rubric into solid, professional feedback without spending your entire weekend doing it, Pedagogo is built to handle the heavy lifting.

My goal isn't just to make you a more creative educator (though I hope it will do that). My goal is to help you get your prep done in a fraction of the time instead of recurring evening and weekends, so you can close your laptop and actually enjoy your evening. 

We’re officially open, and I’d love for you to try it out.