Academics
DistrictForge
The same votes, redrawn, can hand one side twice the seats. DistrictForge shows how winner-take-all districts turn a 55% vote into all 5 seats — or just 2 — depending on who draws the lines, through packing and cracking. Predict the seats, then measure the gerrymander with the efficiency gap argued before the Supreme Court. Non-partisan (Violet vs Orange), all exact, all on your device. Ages 15–18.
#4b5fa6 Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
DistrictForge is text-forward (R-OLDER-TEEN-DN-ADAPTED, ages 15–18) — no illustrated cast; the 'characters' are the pieces of a districting map, played by two synthetic parties (Violet and Orange, non-partisan by construction). A district is winner-take-all, so a party's share of the seats can be nothing like its share of the votes. Packing concentrates an opponent into a few landslide districts, wasting their surplus votes; cracking spreads them thin so they lose everywhere by a little, wasting all of them. The efficiency gap — one party's wasted votes minus the other's, over all votes — turns 'this map feels unfair' into a number, the metric argued in Gill v. Whitford (above ~7% flags a likely gerrymander). Every value is exact integer arithmetic computed on-device. Illustrated portraits/chapters/audio are N/A for the older-teen band, not a follow-on.
The district
Winner-take-all — whoever gets the most votes takes the whole seat, so surplus votes for a winner and every vote for a loser elect no one
Packing
Drawing an opponent into a few districts they win in a landslide, so their extra votes pile up wasted and win no additional seats
Cracking
Splitting an opponent across many districts so they fall just short in each — wasting all their votes while winning nothing
The efficiency gap
The measure of it all: (one party's wasted votes − the other's) ÷ all votes; above about 7% flags a likely gerrymander (Gill v. Whitford)
What's inside
Learning goal
The same votes, redrawn, can hand one side twice the seats. DistrictForge shows how winner-take-all districts turn a 55% vote into all 5 seats — or just 2 — depending on who draws the lines, through packing and cracking. Predict the seats, then measure the gerrymander with the efficiency gap argued before the Supreme Court. Non-partisan (Violet vs Orange), all exact, all on your device. Ages 15–18.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned kits × 25 questions = 400 questions per app, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
How DistrictForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ No ads, no in-app purchases — you pay once
- ✅ COPPA compliant under the 2026 FTC amendments
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
DistrictForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
DistrictForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch