The Foundation: Expertise That Built a Business
Dennis DiNoia has been teaching math since 1988. Over those decades, he developed something that became the core of his business: a teaching voice students actually understand.
“"I was trying to write it in a language that kids understood—in their language—instead of trying to use a bunch of mathy terms. I used language that kids could understand as opposed to traditional textbook language."
That approach became a business. For 15+ years, his online homeschool math platform has served more than 10,000 students with accredited middle and high school courses. The trust he built with families came from one thing—his teaching worked.
When AI came to education, Dennis didn't see a threat. He saw an opportunity to evolve what he'd built.
"We're looking at a five-year plan for what we want to create with AI," Dennis explained. "How it can support our families, our students, our staff. The homework helper was the first component."
But there was a problem. Every AI tutor on the market pulls from the internet and sounds generic.
"When you put something in AI, AI is going out searching the web and what's out there is the traditional mathy things," Dennis noted. Nothing that reflected decades of teaching expertise or the unique voice he'd built his business on. Dennis didn't want to replace what made his teaching work. He wanted to scale it.
The Partnership: Figuring It Out Together
We didn't show up with a pre-built solution. We showed up to build something that didn't exist yet—AI infrastructure that preserves teaching expertise instead of replacing it.
The Vision Evolved
Dennis originally wanted an AI to make mistakes purposely for students to debug. We built that, but realized his proprietary content—examples, solutions, practice problems—was the real goldmine.
The Technical Pivot
We pivoted to build a custom RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) system that ingests his unique materials. It responds in his teaching language, not generic "textbook" math.
The scope evolved. The technical approach evolved. What stayed constant was the goal: preserve Dennis's teaching expertise while adding AI capabilities.
“"The great thing about working with the PromptOwl team is that they're willing to dance. We don't know exactly what we want because AI in education is so new—but they adapt with us. You don't find that kind of partnership very often. It's rare."– Dennis DiNoiaFounder, Mr. D Math
We Built Infrastructure That Learns. The real challenge wasn't just the technology. It was that nobody knew what "AI tutor in Dennis's voice" should look like. We used conversation monitoring and annotation systems extensively. Every student interaction got analyzed to harden the AI's behavior over time.
The Deployment: Scale & Strategy
Live middle school math students using the tool.
A roadmap for AI in education.
Opening Unexpected Doors
The AI work opened conversations with 50 public school districts Dennis works with. They are watching to see how this plays out. The strategic position: be the one who figured out AI in math education while everyone else is still scared of it.
What We Built Together
Custom RAG with Voice Preservation
Ingested proprietary teaching content while maintaining Dennis's unique language and methodology.
Multi-Model Orchestration
Supervisor architecture routing between specialized models for mistake generation, tutoring, and help.
Conversation Monitoring
Real-time annotation system enabling continuous improvement based on actual student interactions.
The Bigger Insight
Most AI in education asks teachers to adapt their methods to fit the technology. We built technology that adapts to preserve what makes great teachers great.
Dennis spent decades developing expertise. That's the asset. Our infrastructure makes it scalable without diluting it.