About Me

about image

From Teacher to Founder

Hi, I'm Helen Bartlett. I've been an early childhood educator for over 26 years, teaching in nine different countries, but no matter where I've been, one thing's always the same: the endless scroll of photos after a full day in the classroom.

I take photos to document learning. To jog my memory. To capture joy. What I didn't love was everything that came next: sorting, renaming, finding the right moment weeks (or months) later. I'd always ask myself: Why can't my phone just do this for me?

When no one else built it, I decided to try. That's how Sorone was born, a voice-first photo tool that sorts as you go

Built From Real Work, For Real Work

Sorone started in the classroom, but it's built for anyone who takes photos for work and is tired of wasting time sorting them. Whether you're a teacher, designer, builder, or small business owner, if your camera roll is full of work photos and your evenings are spent organising them into folders, Sorone is for you. It's being shaped by real people doing real work, not through top-down product decisions, but through honest feedback and lived experience.

Building Tools, Together

Building Sorone taught me something I didn't expect: that I could build other things too.

I started with Lovable, using it to prototype ideas. But along the way, I kept noticing other problems, small, everyday ones that the tools I had didn't solve. So I built for those, too

A financial tracker. A marketing dashboard to track how I promote Sorone. And PlaySight, my own AI-powered platform for pedagogical documentation, because no existing edtech platform did what I needed it to do, and I'd reached the point where I knew I could just build it myself.

None of these are products; they're just tools that work for me. And that's the part I want to share with other teachers.

I started sitting down with two colleagues to help them spot the everyday frustrations in their own work that could become simple tools. Not teaching code. Coaching the thinking.

Now I'm taking it on the road. Every time I travel, I run a Coffee & Build session wherever I'm staying. If you're nearby, come find me.

Tools I've built for myself

  • SoroneVoice-first photo documentation for early years teachers
  • PlaySightAI-powered pedagogical analytics — built because nothing else did what I needed
  • Financial trackerPersonal spending and forecasting, tailored to my situation
  • Marketing dashboardTracks how I promote Sorone across channels — without paying for a platform
Lauren

Lauren

"I built a platform that pulls multiple forms of documentation together to analyse, collate, and track data — giving me an overall picture of each child's development and the class as a whole."

"Helen was super patient but allowed the struggle. She didn't do it for me — she talked me through different ways of thinking it through."

Christine

Christine

"I built a multi-data collecting platform that gathers formative data, observations, and summative assignments — now I can look at one place and have AI help me analyse and gather insights into how to support or extend learners."

"Total lightbulb moment that I didn't have to know each step prior to building."

Coffee & Build — Bangkok

If you are an educator and in Bangkok, come and join me. Bring your everyday classroom admin frustrations and together we will develop a simple tool that solves your problem.

What we cover:

  • ✓ Safety & limits for non-coders
  • ✓ Define it in your own words
  • ✓ Audit what already exists
  • ✓ Build from your own words
  • ✓ Use it, find the gaps
  • ✓ Use AI to talk to AI
📅Date :  29th May 2026
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Sorone. Photo Documentation for Early Years Teachers