Dunedin man Rupert Denton is referring to his startup Spellcaster, a literacy platform targeting children and teens who have become disengaged from mainstream schooling.
Mr Denton, who moved from Melbourne to Dunedin with his family at the beginning of 2022, has drawn on his own experiences as a secondary school teacher to create the resource.
Spellcaster recently received a $150,000 grant, in the startup category, from the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence (Code) as part of its 10th round of game development funding in the city.
It previously received a $40,000 grant in the KickStart category.
Since July last year, Spellcaster has been in a pilot phase but it was now being launched commercially to help students and teachers.
Mr Denton was previously teaching in Victoria, initially in rural areas and then at The Pavilion School in inner Melbourne, a specialist school for students who had been disengaged or excluded from mainstream education.
Many of the students came with complex presentations — whether that was encounters with the justice system, homelessness or drug and alcohol abuse, they had been through a lot and that was sometimes coupled with intellectual disabilities or learning difficulties, he said.
Often there had been negative experiences with mainstream schooling and they were very disengaged, Mr Denton said.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, for children it was not just a matter of making remote learning work, as some did not have the likes of desks or the internet, but also working with foodbanks to ensure they were fed.
Literacy resources were typically designed for much younger children and Mr Denton wanted to build something that was more appropriate for those in their teenage years.
He taught himself software engineering in Melbourne and then did further work after arriving in Dunedin with his New Zealand-born wife and two young children.
He began talking to former colleagues, speech therapists and parents to find what was available for older students and the challenges they found when working with disengaged learners.
He began working full-time on Spellcaster in February last year, saying he still felt a commitment to students at The Pavilion School, even if they were no longer there.
The pilot phase had been about getting as much feedback from as many different learners, educators and the public as possible, to really “dial in the product”.
Initially, it was a game but the platform had been extended to have lesson plan support and an adult was needed to lead the work.
Pricing was deliberately set to be affordable so it was not out of reach for anyone needing it.
It was designed to layer in alongside what schools were already doing, rather than replace what they were doing, he said.
Since its launch, about 4000 students throughout Australia and New Zealand had been on the platform.
He was working with educators globally, including at an international school in Kobe, Japan, and a speech pathologist near Baltimore who was using Spellcaster to support someone with a speech language disorder.
Mr Denton saw it being particularly used for students aged 9 and over. They were at the centre of everything the team of three — Mr Denton, game developer Josiah Hunt and software engineer Ethan Fraser — did.
Mr Hunt was also based in Dunedin while Mr Fraser, who is originally from Dunedin, now lives in Wellington.
While Mr Denton had never been to Dunedin before he moved here, he loved the sense of community and how supportive the startup ecosystem was. “I’m so proud to be doing something in Dunedin,” he said.
