The Evolution of Study Notes: From Lazy to Downright Slothful

April 22, 2024

This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

Study guides, Cliff Notes, movie versions, comic books, and bribing elder siblings or past students for their old homework and class notes were the how kids used to work their way through classes. Then came the Internet and over the years innovative people have perfected study guides. Some have even made successful businesses from study guides for literature, science, math, foreign language, writing, history, and more.

The quality of these study guides range from poor to fantastic. PinkMonkey.com is one of the average study guide websites. It has some free book guides while others are behind a paywall. There are also educational tips for different grades and advice for college applications. The information is a little dated but when it is combined with other educational and homework help websites it still has its uses.

PinkMonkey.com describes itself as:

“…a "G" rated study resource for junior high, high school, college students, teachers and home schoolers. What does PinkMonkey offer you? The World’s largest library of free online Literature Summaries, with over 460 Study Guides / Book Notes / Chapter Summaries online currently, and so much more. No more trips to the book store; no more fruitless searching for a booknote that no one ever has in stock! You’ll find it all here, online 24/7!”

YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms are also 24/7. They’re also being powered more and more by AI. It won’t be long before AI is condensing these guides and turning them into consumable videos. There are already channels that made study guides but homework still requires more than an AI answer.

ChatGPT and other generative AI algorithms are getting smarter by being trained on sets that pull their data from the Internet. These datasets include books, videos, and more. In the future, students will be relying on study guides in video format. The question to ask is how will they look? Will they summarize an entire book in fifteen seconds, take it chapter by chapter, or make movies powered by AI?

Whitey Grace, April 22, 2024

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Publishing, Training

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.