SmartObserve: An AI-Assisted Developmental Observation Tool for Tracking School Readiness in Malaysian Preschools

About the Project

Preschool teachers watch and note children’s progress every day, but turning those quick notes into structured records takes time and often varies from one teacher to the next. SmartObserve is a proposed AI-assisted tool designed to make this easier. A teacher types or dictates a short observation, and the tool suggests which school-readiness domain it belongs to (cognitive, language, social-emotional or physical), along with a developmental indicator. The teacher then reviews, edits or rejects the suggestion, so the final judgement always stays with them. Over time, the tagged notes are designed to build a profile for each child and a short, plain-language progress summary that can be shared with parents. SmartObserve is intended to run in a standard web browser on basic devices, which suits preschools with limited digital tools and supports the digital fluency goals of Kurikulum Prasekolah 2026. Child data will be protected through child codes and teacher-controlled storage, in line with the Personal Data Protection Act 2010. No prototype has been built yet. The next steps are to build it and test it with teachers in West Malaysia.