A husband-and-wife team, Utsav Gupta and Rebecca Neff, have created ScrollEd, a new app that turns textbooks into social feeds. The startup is aiming to make studying more fun for school-age kids by copying the look of the For You Page. The app uses AI to transform textbook files into lively, interactive feeds, offering “instant concepts, clean summaries, anchor examples, and micro-quizzes” while letting users “keep scrolling without losing flow.”.
The ScrollEd founders
Gupta and Neff are trying to bring social video feeds into education. ScrollEd is based in Palo Alto. The startup’s website boasts that its redesigned lessons have an 80% completion rate, which is much higher than what you’d expect a dry textbook to achieve.
Revyze and the French model
Revyze is a French app that presents a swipeable, social feed of educational videos. It has drawn a following in Europe. The American market for TikTok-ified schoolwork remains largely unclaimed.
Exam season evidence
During exam time, students turn to educational YouTube content in large numbers. Software like Duolingo has found ways to make learning feel like a game. Yet, many of the tools that try to make homework more engaging are tiny apps, such as “pdf-to-brainrot” services like StudyRot and Coconote.
ScrollEd’s pitch
ScrollEd wants to offer a more sophisticated solution. The founders will get a chance to prove that ScrollEd has a place in American schools at the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200 competition, which takes place next month. “The ambition is a social network that’s better for you,” Gupta told TechCrunch.
The roadblocks ahead
A number of educators are pushing back against these tools. Limits that will reduce the availability of YouTube on classroom devices were recently enacted by New York City’s schools.
The companies compared
- Revyze — the French app that proved the swipeable feed model in Europe.
- ScrollEd — the American startup trying to bring the same design to homework.
- Coconote and StudyRot — the small-scale apps ScrollEd competes with.
- Duolingo — the app that has figured out how to gamify learning.
- YouTube — the platform whose use is being cut in New York City classrooms.
Why ScrollEd is worth watching
Revyze has succeeded in France, where the For You Page design has already been put to work. ScrollEd is now taking the same approach, wagering that it will prove as effective in education as it has been in entertainment.
Whether ScrollEd’s method actually produces results will be determined by the 80% completion rate, which stands as the single number that answers that question.
Source material: “Will students do their homework if it’s turned into a TikTok-style feed? ScrollEd thinks so.,” Tubefilter.
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