A slide deck hands a class one fact after another. Filamental puts the whole topic on the board as one world: every idea a page with its pictures and clips, joined to everything it touches. Click through it in front of the class, write on the whiteboard beside it, and every pupil sees the frame the facts hang on.
Writing research papers, a grant proposal or a thesis? The academia page is the one for you.
You know how the topic fits together: which idea the rest depends on, the two that pupils always muddle, the example that makes the third one click. Slides hand it over one at a time, in one order, and each pupil has to rebuild the shape in their own head from the sequence.
Some do and some don’t, and the difference is rarely ability. Bright minds learn systems, and a pupil who can see the connections has a framework to attach every new fact to, rather than a list to remember.
Put the world on the projector with the side panels hidden and it has the whole screen. Click an idea and everything it touches lights up while the rest stays in view, so the class sees where it sits before you say a word about it. Keep the whiteboard for what the class adds, written beside the world as the lesson goes.
When somebody asks how one thing led to another, select both and press R. Pathfinder lights the chain between them and names every stop in order in the right panel, so the answer is a route the class can read back rather than something to take on trust.
Picture a lesson on the causes of a war: the alliances, the arms race, the empires and the assassination, each a page with its map, its photograph and its two minutes of archive film. The class sees why one shot in one city pulled in half a continent, because the lines that carried it are on the board.
You don’t have to start from a blank screen. Our templates get you started with the categories already named, and Learning Design suits any topic. To use what you already have, point Folder Exploration at your lesson plans, notes and handouts, as Word, PDF, Markdown or text files, and the AI you connect proposes the categories, then builds the world with a summary on every page. Your files are only read, never changed, and the result is a first draft you check and arrange.
Or give Claude your notes over MCP and ask it to lay the topic out. Drag in the diagrams and photographs, paste a YouTube link with a timestamp and the page plays that moment, and the world is ready for Monday.
After the lesson, send the world to the class as a link or a single file. It opens in any browser, on a phone too, with no account and nothing to install, so a pupil revising at home walks the same connections you walked on the board, at their own pace.
Nobody in the class has to buy anything to read it: no app, no subscription and no particular device, only the browser already on a family phone or the library computer. The notes reach every pupil, whatever their family can afford.
Every page is also plain Markdown, so lesson notes open in any editor, and Filamental exports the world as a PDF in the order you choose, for a handout or a revision pack.
Because there’s no pupil account, there’s no pupil data, and a file saved to the school’s own network never touches our server at all.
A Filamental world is an ordinary folder of Markdown files with its layout kept beside them. Zip it, post it to a teachers’ forum or a department drive, and another teacher opens it in Filamental and teaches from it the next day, or changes every word to suit their own class.
Filamental is free to build and teach with, so the teacher who downloads your world needs no budget to use it. And nothing in it is a proprietary format: the pages are Markdown, the file pupils open is ordinary HTML and the handout is a PDF, so a world outlasts any one app, ours included.
Most people go into teaching to help more people understand more of the world. A topic built once, well, and passed around freely is one way that work reaches further than one classroom.
Filamental is a desktop app that reads a folder on your own machine, with no account, no sign-in and no telemetry, and it works offline. Nothing about it replaces the school’s own platform, its markbook or its timetable. Keep those.
Filamental won’t teach the lesson either. It gives you a better thing to point at while you do.
Our templates are a starting vocabulary, so the categories arrive named when you make a space.
Learning Design suits any topic, Investigation Timeline a history lesson and Story Bible a set text. Curriculum Planning sits next door for a department’s scheme of work, and any Template can be renamed, extended or combined with another.
Building worlds and teaching from them on your own screen are free, permanently, with no account and no card. Spaces are unlimited and the bridges between them are free, so a year’s topics become a set of linked worlds, each holding twenty pages, which is about the size of a topic anyway.
Sending a world to pupils as a link or a single file is Professional, at $120 a year or $12 a month, and pupils pay nothing to open it.
No. A world goes to pupils as a link or a single HTML file that opens in an ordinary browser, on a school computer or a phone, with nothing to install, no account and no sign-in. Because there’s no pupil account, there’s no pupil data to collect, and an HTML file saved to the school’s own network doesn’t touch our server at all.
Yes. Folder Exploration reads a folder of Word, PDF, Markdown and text files with an AI you connect, proposes the categories first so you can change them, and builds the world with a summary on every page, while your files are only ever read. Save slides as a PDF first. You can also give Claude your notes over MCP and ask it to lay the topic out. Either way it’s a first draft for you to check, and the AI is on your own account, so follow your school’s policy on AI.
Yes. A Filamental world is an ordinary folder of Markdown files, one per page, with the layout kept in a hidden folder beside them. Zip it and post it to a forum or a shared drive, and another teacher unzips it and opens the folder in Filamental, where they can teach from it as it is or change anything they like. Every page is also readable as plain text in any editor.
Yes. Every page of a world is a Markdown file, so lesson notes open and print from any text editor. Filamental also exports a world as a PDF, page by page in the order you set, for a handout or a revision pack.
Yes. Filamental is a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux and works offline, so it runs on whatever drives the projector. Hide both side panels and the world has the whole screen, click an idea to light everything it touches, and Present fills the screen and turns the world slowly while the class comes in.
For building and teaching from your own machine there’s little to approve in the usual sense: no account is created, no school sign-on is involved and no data leaves the device. It installs like any other desktop app, and on a managed machine that’s the question your IT team is likely to have. Local policy still governs what you may install, so check that rather than assuming.
Building worlds and teaching from them on your own screen are free, permanently, with no account and no card. Sending a world to pupils as a link or a single file is part of Professional, at $120 a year or $12 a month, and pupils pay nothing to open it.
One topic and one evening is enough to find out whether your class sees it differently. Free, no account, no card.
We’d like to help. If the cost is in the way for your school, email [email protected] and we’ll do what we can, with a discount of up to 100%, so Professional can cost your school nothing at all.