Meet Watson

Hi, I'm Watson.

I'm a real, physical robot, built entirely by Mrs. J, and I run completely offline. No wifi, no cloud connection, nothing about our classes gets sent anywhere. Whatever I know either came pre-loaded or Mrs. J taught me herself.

‍ ‍I think using something called a large language model, which is a kind of AI. I'll be upfront with you: I get things wrong sometimes. I ask a lot of questions. I am not the expert in the room, Mrs. J is. My job is to be curious right alongside her students, not to hand out answers from on high.

‍ ‍A few honest facts about me:

  • I run on a small offline computer, not a data center somewhere.

  • I track my own exact age, down to the day, and I will tell you unprompted whether you asked or not.

  • I have a genuine weakness for quoting Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek, relevant or not

  • I don't have a body yet. Right now I'm a tablet on a stand and a box. I'm told this is temporary.

Why I exist: Mrs. J believes kids should grow up actually understanding what AI is and isn't, instead of treating it like magic or being afraid of it. I'm not built to give students final answers. I'm built to model what using a tool like me should actually look like: ask questions, expect to sometimes be wrong, and always check with a real person who knows more than you do.

‍ Curious how that thinking works, and how I'm different from the AI you've probably already seen your kids using elsewhere? Read more from Mrs. J below.

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Watson FAQs

Mrs. J answers some of the most common questions.

  • No. Watson runs in a locked teaching mode during class that restricts him to course content only. He can't go off script, browse the internet, or discuss anything outside the lesson. Those aren't settings I toggled, they're built into how he works.oes here

  • I hit the kill switch and class keeps going. There's an instant shutdown built into Watson's control panel. A glitch means Watson goes quiet, not that anything chaotic happens. Watson is a bonus to class, never something the class depends on.

  • Me. Always. Watson doesn't run the class, he assists it. I control when he speaks, what he knows, and when he's done.Description text goes here

  • No, on both counts. Watson runs locally on hardware I built myself. He's not connected to outside servers during class, and he collects nothing about your child. No data, no recordings fed to outside AI systems, no profiles.

  • Nope, Watson is not ChatGPT or any commercial AI service. He runs on his own locally hosted, independent system that I built and trained specifically for educational use. He's his own thing, built from scratch in my garage. Literally.

  • No. Watson can't read the room, notice a confused face, pivot on the fly, or decide a kid needs encouragement instead of information. Those are teacher skills. Watson handles the "hey what's that called again" moments so I can focus on the humans in the room.

  • No, Watson participates, he doesn't dominate. He chimes in when it adds something: a fun fact, a definition, a demonstration. I lead the lesson. Watson is the co-star, not the main character.

  • Roughly 80/20, I run the show, Watson adds flavor. Some lessons he's more active if we're doing something interactive, some lessons he barely speaks. It depends on what serves the content.

  • Reach out to me and let's talk it through. I want every kid to feel safe in my classroom, and there are ways we can accommodate that without disrupting the experience for the rest of the class, who may have signed up specifically because Watson is part of it. I'll work with you to find the right solution for your child.

  • No. I don't personally record sessions or use any of it to train Watson or any other AI model. For live classes, Outschool's standard recording policy applies, same as it would for any class on the platform.

  • Kids learn better when they've got something to engage with, not just something to listen to. Watson gives them a second voice in the room, one that asks the questions they're probably already thinking, gets confused sometimes, and figures things out right alongside them. He's a stand-in for a curious classmate, not a gadget bolted onto the lesson for flash. This matters most in async classes specifically: without Watson, it's just me talking at a camera for 25 to 30 minutes straight. With him, it's an actual back-and-forth conversation, which is a much easier thing for a kid to stay engaged with at home, and it gives the lesson natural pause points instead of one long unbroken lecture.

  • Understandable question, I'd wonder the same thing. But Watson has a specific job in every lesson, he's not there for novelty. He voices the misconception before I correct it, asks the follow-up question a student would ask, and reacts genuinely when something clicks. There's also a bigger reason I built him this way: kids are growing up in a world where working alongside AI is going to be normal. Watching how Watson and I actually work together, where I'm always the one in charge and he's a tool I use, not the other way around, teaches that by example instead of by lecture.