Show HN: I built TikTok but for studying with quizzes from your own notes

by preetramsha • 2 years ago

62 29 2 years ago

I like this concept, but I am concerned about copyrights. Public information might not be as big of a deal as a textbook or closed PDFs. What happens to the data after?

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

I am encouraging people to insert their own custom notes. but even if they add textbooks or anything I think it will be fine as they are not distributing the data and just learning for their own in a fun way

severine2• 2 years ago

Come to think of it, TikTok is like Anki for social cues.

AnEro• 2 years ago

true but tiktok is anki in reverse, it learns you

severine2• 2 years ago

Oh yes, completely agree, I don't even use TT, I was just thinking aloud. Locality of data matters a lot.

smt88• 2 years ago

I assume this is a generic LLM + RAG, so you can't prevent hallucinations and there's a chance (which gets better as the subject gets more complex) that the study materials will be wrong.

And anyway, creating flash cards is a huge study booster by itself. It doesn't make sense to automate that step away.

wordpad25• 2 years ago

Some ANKI flash card sets sell for thousands of dollars, so, clearly, there is demand

mc3301• 2 years ago

Whoa, really? I'm a big anki user (always make my own decks), and I didn't even know there was a marketplace.

starfezzy• 2 years ago

It makes a ton of sense. I've been doing my own custom version of this for the past year and it's a HUGE shift in studying efficiency.

- LLMs are getting better. That's a reality LLM haters need to contend with. The versions that didn't solve your one issue perfectly 2 years ago simply aren't in the rotation any longer. A major release with significant improvements is a nearly monthly occurrence. - I don't know how to convince anyone of this, but the hallucinations have literally zero impact. Not only are they rare and getting rarer, but because you can always spot a hallucination you learn to ignore them. - As someone who's a huge fan of flashcards, you're wrong that this is worse than making your own cards. Instead of spending hours and hours making cards, those hours are spent actively engaging with and absorbing more material.

I can't speak to OP's product, but with my system it's the closest thing I'm aware of to downloading information directly into the brain.

mtrovo2• 2 years ago

Can you share more details about your setup, really interested in this kind of idea for some topics I'm studying right now.

TrinaryWorksToo• 2 years ago

How would you know if you couldn't spot a hallucination?

iJohnDoe• 2 years ago

Really cool idea! Nicely done.

Excited to give it a try.

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

Thank you for the compliment. Please try and let me know if you have any improvement suggestions

its_down_again• 2 years ago

Hey it's working great! Small nitpicks while I'm testing on my macbook + chrome. - It can be easy to "miss" the next card because scrolling feels really fast - I accidentally uploaded the same files twice, but can't figure out how to delete the duplicates.

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

please tell me all the nitpicks so I can improve. also this is just an MPV so deleting files will be added in future

tbihl2• 2 years ago

I played with this a while after uploading one pdf chapter from the textbook I teach out of. The chapter covers text segment and stack dissection of simple C programs, as in rudimentary reverse engineering.

I was happy with many of the flash cards, but I struggle with the idea of encouraging my students to try it because I got 2 or 3 bad cards in the span of about 5 minutes. One tried to ask about an analogy in the text, but it reverse the order, butchering its meaning. One stated hat GDB would be useful for exploring logic and syntax, but not runtime, errors. And another posed a distinction without a difference, which would result in a lot of confused students and, consequently, busier office hours.

tmpz22• 2 years ago

As a student I've been researching the use of AI for various tasks and have come to the initial conclusion that AI improves quantity but not quality such that a student is almost always better off spending an extra 30-60 minutes producing materials themselves.

A lot of tasks like note taking are essential to knowledge retention such that even supplementing notes with AI generated summaries creates clear tradeoffs that personally I choose to avoid.

I'm more curious in AI use by teachers to produce better media for student consumption, paired with tools like Figma, Adobe, Microsoft office, and other tools. In my experience teachers are forced to produce a lot of content, akin to content creators, without the proper incentives, quality controls, or training. I think AI can help there.

I think when paired with great tools, like Figma, then the quality/quantity trade-off of AI is changed. Perhaps there is a lesson there that can eventually be realized by students, but I haven't seen it yet.

ziml77• 2 years ago

Notetaking in handwriting seems to be especially powerful for retention. Even when I had the option to type my notes in college, I kept on hand writing them (despite wishing since like middle school that I could type notes since extended writing with a pen cramps my hand).

tbihl2• 2 years ago

In my undergrad engineering department, we see the biggest opportunity for improvement as being in lab sessions, where it's not reliably apparent who is wrong or struggling, and it takes a while to explain to each group what is wrong. We've had some luck feeding from student answers from our lab instructions into structured AI prompts that provide individualized feedback.

But that takes even more time to work on student material, which is not a highly rewarded way to spend one's time. Edit: plus, most of the time my experience is that lower-friction assignments result not in better-spent study time, but in less study time for my course.

mandeepj• 2 years ago

What’s the purpose of quick quiz? I answered Paris fro “ What's the capital of France?”; nothing happened afterwards. I was using mobile chrome.

Anyway, congratulations on your launch.

mimischi• 2 years ago

I think it’s a demo of the interface and nothing more

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

it's just a demo. you can create a subject and then insert your study materials then you can quizzes will be generated which you can scroll like tiktok but in this you are actually learning

koinedad• 2 years ago

Maybe having AI generated TikTok-like people read your AI generated flash cards to you…

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

that is an amazing idea. will be added soon

mtrovo2• 2 years ago

That's a really neat idea. Now I really need to hear them read by the AI-generated narration from TikTok.

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

that's a good idea I will look into making it. thanks and please let me know if you have any other recommendation.

leohonexus• 2 years ago

Fun fact: The founder of TikTok Alex Zhu worked on an education app but failed so miserably he decided to pivot to musical.ly, which later became TikTok.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7y971yL5dE

preetramsha7• 2 years ago

I didn't know that. thanks for sharing

Show HN: I built TikTok but for studying with quizzes from your own notes

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