0:00 / 0:25
Follow along
TwigaGuide · TeachersTwigaGuide · TeachersFollow along
Getting Started
Costs, devices, accounts, what it remembers and where to write when it breaks. The questions you will be asked in the staff room before anyone else signs up.
No. Everything happens in a WhatsApp chat, in the app you already have. There is nothing to download and no website to sign in to.
hi. before i tell the other teachers about this, do i need to download anything?
I'm Twiga, your teaching assistant bot developed by the Tanzania AI Community. Everything happens right here in this chat, there's nothing to install. I can: - Explain concepts from the official TIE textbooks - Create NECTA-style practice questions - Provide teaching tips and lesson ideas Just tell me the subject and topic.
One exception. The setup forms only open in the WhatsApp phone app, not in WhatsApp Web or Desktop. Everything after setup works anywhere.
There is no fee and no subscription. In five months of one teacher's real use there was never a payment prompt or a trial that ran out.
What you spend is WhatsApp data, at your normal rate. Almost everything both ways is text, so it is small. The only heavy items are PDF files, such as a mock exam and its marking scheme. Those download only when you tap them.
Your phone number is your account. There is no email address, no username and no password. You register by sending one message, and then a person on the Twiga team approves you.
No. Twiga reads text only. Anything else comes back the same way.
[8 second voice note]
Sorry, I only understand textual messages.
Do not type your question as a photo caption
One teacher sent a photo with his question typed in the caption. The photo was refused and the caption went with it. Twiga never saw the question. Type your question as a message of its own.
Media you send can also sit unread in the chat and get refused much later. If a "textual messages" reply turns up out of nowhere, it is probably answering an old photo or voice note, not what you just typed.
Yes. Twiga reads English and Kiswahili. Ask in Kiswahili and the answer comes back in Kiswahili. One teacher asked for a Book Keeping lesson plan on the trial balance in Kiswahili and got the whole plan in Kiswahili. Write in whichever language you are quicker in.
Inside a conversation, yes. Ask what your last question was and it tells you, along with the one before it. That is what lets you say "the law you just gave me" instead of typing it all again.
It is not a record of your term. Asked for the very first question ever sent to it, it failed twice with an error. Treat the chat as a conversation, not an archive.
Keep what you want to reuse
Star the message in WhatsApp, or save the PDF to your phone. A lesson plan or an exam paper you want again next term should be saved by you, not looked up later by asking.
It knows what is in your profile, and that is what you typed into the setup forms. Ask it directly and it will tell you it does not hold your personal details, then point you at settings.
In practice it may still greet you by a name. One teacher was called "Teacher Edgar" and "Mr. Edgar" in a chat where his WhatsApp name was something else entirely. If it uses a name that is not yours, send settings, open Personal Info and correct it.
Secondary school only. Asked directly, it says it covers Book Keeping, Mathematics and Physics for Form 1 and Form 2. It has refused a request for primary school materials, and another for English Literature.
In practice it has also answered Geography requests in full, including lesson plans and a whole mock exam. So what it says it covers and what it will actually answer do not fully agree. The list on your own profile is what governs your chat.
Yes, and it never sounds wrong. The most common problem is an answer drawn from a different form level than the one you asked for. Checking Twiga's Answers is the one minute check that catches it.
Some jobs really are slow. A full mock exam takes about ten minutes and Twiga tells you so while it works. A reply that never arrives is a different thing, and When Twiga Doesn't Reply covers how to tell them apart.
One. settings, sent on its own, opens your profile. Every other thing you send is plain language.
settingsWrite to dev@ai.or.tz. That address only ever appears inside an error message, so copy it down now rather than waiting to be shown it.
Include three things so they can find what went wrong: