Honolulu, Hawaii has become the fourth city to sign on to New York- and Halifax-based edtech startup Pressto’s Junior Journalist Program, aimed at helping youths develop media literacy, as the company readies a new product offering for school classrooms.

Pressto, founded by former magazine publisher Daniel Stedman, is a web app that lets children write and edit a mock newspaper and receive automated feedback on their work from an AI system. The app, which launched a last year, is targeted at kids in Grades 3 through 8. It lets them share their creations online or print them off to make a physical newspaper.

Under the program, teachers will volunteer to supervise young people as they research and write opinion articles or editorials about a special press released created by the mayor’s office for the purpose. Some students will also have their work highlighted by the city. Other than Honolulu, the program is used by Oklahoma City, Kansas City and New York City.

“We’re focused on creating a fun and rewarding writing environment for both students and teachers, marrying the knowledge of our team of educators with the technical ingenuity of our product developers and engineers, who have a proven track record of leveraging and scaling classroom technology,” wrote Pressto CEO Daniel Stedman on LinkedIn.

Stedman spent 15 years in New York running two local magazines, The L and Brooklyn Magazine, with his brother Scott before selling their company.

Pressto was inspired by his efforts to help his son, who was struggling to become good at writing. Stedman’s solution was to make writing practice more fun by encouraging his son to create homemade newspapers.

His customer discovery process – which included advice from such specialists as University of King’s College journalism school director Tim Currie – has revealed considerable interest from decision-makers at schools and universities.

Now, the company is planning to release a second product aimed specifically at in-classroom instruction, which will include a special dashboard for teachers and personalized feedback tools.