Rain mode · what works without internet

The picture

ภาพรวม — วันนี้ เดือนที่ 1 เดือนที่ 3 เดือนที่ 6

Everything below the red line works when the cloud is gone. Everything above it needs a signal, and we would rather say so than let you find out in the rain.

Diagram: what works in the rain — needs a signal, on the phone offline, on paper; today, month 1, month 3, month 6 — What works in the rain, September 30, 2026. ● building now · ✓ works today · ✗ needs a signal. Tap to open the full-size version.

Two minutes: the technology on ploy.com and englishteacher.com, now and coming — narrated in English with Thai and English captions. The voice is a computer's; Ploy and Ben will record their own.

Today, exactly

วันนี้ใช้ได้อะไรบ้าง — ตรง ๆ

Thing	Without a signal	Why
EnglishTeacher.com — 81 topics, 2,919 words, the pictures, the Thai, the pronunciation guides	✓ works	after you open the practice page once with a signal; the phone keeps it. Add it to the home screen.
"Listen"	✓ works	if your phone has an English voice installed. Three minutes, once: how →
"Speak" — the microphone score	✗ needs a signal	the browser sends your voice to a speech service in the cloud. On Android there is no offline Thai or English recognizer we can reach from a web page. We will not pretend otherwise.
Ploy Hears — the ten-week clinic	✓ works	after the first open; it keeps its own copy on the phone.
The dictionary — 82,683 words	◐ partly	only the letters you have already opened. It downloads by letter to save data.
ploy.com — her story, the safety page	✓ works	after the first open.
ploy.com — the translator	✗ not built	the page says exactly what it will be and what it will not. Nothing is running yet.
ESLteacher.com — the worksheet builder	✗ needs a signal	it asks a cloud model. Build it in the staff room, print it, take the paper to the room with no signal. The paper is the product.
Printed word lists, the 50 lesson plans, the score sheet	✓ works	paper never loses signal.
LINE, video calls	✗ needs a signal	and always will.

What we are building, month by month

สิ่งที่กำลังสร้าง ทีละเดือน

In order, smallest and most certain first. Each one is finished when it runs in our own classroom for a month, not when it is announced.

Month 1 · by November 30, 2026

The rain pack, and the phrasebook

The rain pack. Every one of the 2,919 words recorded in a real voice and packed into about 12 MB. One button on the practice page, a progress bar, and a "พร้อมใช้ออฟไลน์ ✓" badge when it is done. "Listen" then works on any phone, whatever voices it has.
The phrasebook. 300–500 Thai/Isan ⇄ English phrases for the village and the classroom — the market, the clinic, the school gate, the rice field — recorded by Ploy and Ben, installable, and working with no signal. This is the honest first version of the ploy.com translator, and it ships in weeks, not months.
The print pack. The 36 ready worksheet topics as PDFs in one zip for the school laptop.

Month 3 · by January 31, 2027

Thai speech on the phone, with no signal

A companion app (not a web page — a web page cannot do this) with a Thai speech recognizer that runs on the phone itself, about 155 MB downloaded once. You say it in Thai; the phone writes it down with no signal.
Thai ⇄ English phrases, offline. Say it in Thai, hear it in English, and back — on the device. Phrases and short sentences first; conversation later, honestly.
An Isan model, attempted. A Thai research lab has released an Isan speech model. Nobody has yet made it run on a phone. We will try, and say here whether it worked.
Consent forms, Thai and English, one per child per school year, so that the photographs on these sites are ones a parent agreed to.

Month 6 · by April 30, 2027

The classroom box

A small computer in the school — a mini-PC of about ฿10,000, or a Raspberry Pi for half that — with its own Wi-Fi and no internet connection at all. It serves the app, the dictionary, the phrasebook, the worksheets and Ploy Hears to thirty phones at once, in a room where the signal never reaches.
Pilot at Ban Han Hee School. If it survives a term there, we publish the parts list and the setup so any school can build one.

Staying in the cloud, on purpose

What we will not move

The AI worksheet builder — it needs a large model and the output is paper anyway.
The English microphone score — Google's recognizer is better than anything we could fit on a phone, so use it when you have a signal and use a person when you do not.
LINE and video calls — they are the network.

Tested in our classroom first, so the twenty can learn it

ทดลองในห้องเรียนของเราก่อน แล้วค่อยสอนคนอื่น

Ploy and Ben teach at Ban Han Hee School in Rattanaburi. Everything on this page runs there before it is written about here: the phones on the desks, the printed sheets, the box in the corner when it exists. The twenty trainees on the TESOL course learn on the same kit, in the same weather — so that when they walk into their own classroom with one board and no signal, they have already taught a lesson that way, and it worked.

If something here stops being true, it is corrected on this page with the date, not quietly.

Progress log

บันทึกความคืบหน้า — ทุกสิ้นเดือน

September 30, 2026

Plan published. This page, the diagram and the video went up. The home page now carries the "Install before you go" panel and says plainly that the microphone needs a signal. The rain pack and the phrasebook are next; recording starts with Ploy's voice this month.

October 31, 2026

No entry was written on the day. Added November 4: the rain pack, the phrasebook and the print pack have not shipped; the November 30 entry will say what did.

November 30, 2026

— month 1 due: the rain pack, the phrasebook, the print pack.

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