Socratic: Making children wiser than ever

Socratic- An app that makes children wiser and brighter day by day. The Google AI-powered app is an exceptional creation to help a budding and inquisitive mind not only to master his school tasks but also grow intellectually. Whether it’s maths, science, social studies, language, literature or any other subject, the Socratic app helps to nail each chapter and aspect with easy to understand visuals and help from experts. 

It’s a fun learning app filled with interactive features that makes a student embrace his studies rather than run away from it. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, the app can deduce with which process(es) will a student find it easier to solve a query/question. Suppose if you’re child wants to solve his math homework answers, the app will help him/her find it. The person simply needs to click a photo of the question or type it out to get the answer. 

The answer is obtained by the OCR or Optical Character Recognition technology as it enables the learning app to recognise the characters in the form of the query. Then you get a variety of ‘cards’ explaining and supporting the answer. It could be in the form of descriptive answers, video explanations, Q&A, infographic, Google search, etc. You also get original answers and elaborations from the parent community, i.e. from Socrates.org.

Children may mischievously like to call it the ‘app that does homework for you’, but that’s okay, they should be able to learn more from it. 

Let us see what all it has to offer:

About Socratic App

Logo

They say an owl is a symbol observation, quick wit, tranquillity, wisdom, intelligence and a lot of other traits. Such are the qualities a child should hone, and the logo encapsulates the essence with an animated bespectacled rendition. A young mind might take an instant liking to it. 

Features Of Socratic App

The question answering app is easy to use, especially for kids who have a lot to finish on their platter.       

1. Picture Answer App

When you open the app, it opens a stylised Camera with a confined space where you are supposed to click the query, and after clicking, you can crop the area to fit the query. 

2. Type it out

You can swipe the camera option to the ABC section, where you just need to type out your question. 

Note: In both cases, you can ask just one query at a time.

3. A barrage of answers

You ask a question from any field, be it from maths, science, literature or social science, you will get windows of answer from many popular websites reflecting the different nature of answers. Some popular websites include- Cliffnotes, YouTube, Cymath, Wolfram Alpha, Quora and Google search as well.

4- Resourceful study guides

The app has everything, including direct answers, graphical representations, video tutorials, statistical problems with solutions and answers, in-depth analysis, subjective commentary and a lot more for just one question. They have partnered with the best pedagogues under whose aegis your child or younger sibling will shine.

5- Complex problems in easy steps

Whether it’s a complex trigonometric sum or a hard historical question, the Socratic app has the answer to it all.

The Socratic App is divided into 4 main categories with further subdivisions in every category.

Science

• Anatomy and Physiology
• Astronomy
• Astrophysics
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Earth Science
• Environmental Science
• Organic Chemistry
• Physics

Math

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Geometry
• Prealgebra
• Precalculus
• Statistics
• Trigonometry

Social Science

• Psychology

Humanities

• English Grammar
• U.S. History
• World History

Source: Wikipedia

6- Social Media Sharing

If you pull down the screen after opening the app, you get the option to share the app on social media. You can share the link with anyone via Messenger, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.  

Hits and Strikes of Socratic App

Hits

• Fast and easy to use
• A lot of solutions and access to many types of problem-solving websites
• Includes almost every possible subject

Strikes

• At times the app is not able to provide complicated mathematical problems or questions from other subjects.
• Some answers can become too complicated or too many answers to a single question may confuse the student.

Fast Facts about Socratic App

• Socratic was founded by Christopher Pedregal, who is also the CEO. Shreyans Bhansali is the co-founder and is currently serving as the Head of Engineering.

• The company was acquired by Google on August 17th, 2019.
• It raised $7.5 million over 2 rounds of investments.
• Socratic has 1 Lead investor (Spark Capital) and 9 other investors. John Maloney and Omidyar Network are the newest entrants in their list of investors.
• The app has experienced a deficit of over 35 per cent in their downloads in the last 30 days with the current number at 276,993.
• It has monthly visits of over 12 million.
• Socratic generates over $1 million in revenue annually and has a post-money valuation somewhere between $10-50 million.
• Last year Socratic has made an investment of over $13.2 million on Monetize, an education lender.
• The company participated in EdTechX Europe in 2016.

The Verdict- Socratic App Review

Design- 3.5 stars
Usability- 4.5 stars
Features- 4 stars
Support- 3.5 stars

MAD rates: 3.5 stars

The ‘take a picture of your homework and get answers app’ or the Socratic app has a lot to offer in order to increase a young mind’s intellect. A child has to go through a lot (in schools and outside) these days; not just daily tasks but he/she has other activities in life as well. An app like Socratic extends a hand of friendship to the adolescent mind. You can get easy solutions to many things plus, always a chance to learn extra. Thus, Socratic is not merely an app that does homework for you but more, much more.