Hi, my name is Anna. I am a rising junior in high school interning at Podsie for the summer running their social media accounts! Over the past few months, I've gotten the unique opportunity to use the Podsie learning platform every day to help me learn and master content that I need to know for this upcoming school year. This is my last week at my intership, so I figured why not write a blog post about my overall experience with Podsie's learning platform. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Podsie thus far!
First, what I enjoy about Podsie is the fact that it is very personalized. For example, I could be doing well with my AP English vocabulary. Meanwhile, let's suppose my friend Taylor is struggling. In this case, Podsie would show Taylor her struggling vocabulary terms more often so that she remembers them. Podsie would then show me these same terms less often because I’ve already demonstrated that I have a strong grasp of the terms. With this, Taylor and I can study what we individually need to without having the entire class review things they don’t need to do. Not to say that class review time is not good; it just helps narrow down what the whole class needs to study and review.
One thing I don’t like about Podsie is that I cannot make individual mock assignments just for me to review. With the limited availability of free, helpful review resources, it would be wonderful if Podsie added this feature for students. I know that many other students and I would be interested in having a new and different way of studying that isn’t flipping over notecards over and over or playing a game constantly. Hopefully, in the future, the ability to create individual mock assignments as a student will be an option. I can see it being used well and being able to help students study many different subjects.
Another thing I like about Podsie is that it's excellent for holding people accountable for studying and not just tapping out and flipping over a notecard or looking at the answer on a review sheet. With Podsie, you have to try at least to get it right or remember the answer, versus a study resource like Quizlet, where you can flip over the notecard without accountability. I've falsely promised myself, "Next time I won't just flip it over 😅" far too many times. The only thing with Podsie is that depending on the type of question given, students can self-rate their answer, and their rating doesn't always line up with the correctness of their response. However, a teacher can override a student's answer if it is highly inaccurate.
Overall, I think Podsie is great for studying vocabulary terms, definitions, and ideas (think laws of physics or literal laws), making it super useful for core classes. I've been using Podsie to study for my AP Environmental Science and AP English Language and Composition classes' "first day back" quizzes, which has been super helpful! I haven't been able to use it as much with my math classes. Still, I'm also thinking about using Podsie to help me prepare for my Spanish class and familiarize myself with translations and pronoun usage.
So, in conclusion, I think Podsie is an incredible and helpful learning resource that teachers can and should use (and hopefully students sometime soon). Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this blog post, and if you have any thoughts, questions, or comments, please send them our way at hello@podsie.org!
A brief recap of "Improving Students' Long-Term Knowledge Retention Through Personalized Review" by Lindsey, Shroyer, Pashler, & Mozer.
This week, we're featuring the voice of Christopher (Chris) Hua, a member of the founding team of Podsie, and the first teacher to use Podsie in his classroom.