🚌 “Do you have a Blookit for us to study?”

With final exams in full swing, this year I’ve noticed an odd little trend. I gave students a study guide for an end of semester vocabulary test, and many asked if I had a Blookit for them. (For context, Blookit helps study with online flashcards.)

Call me old, but as a high schooler in the days of the Playstation 2, Nu Metal, and Hit Clips, asking your teacher if they made flash cards for you would have been a social faux pas. Like, your hands aren’t broken, so just cut some notecards and write the word and definition. Carry them with you. Study in spare moments.

Then again, we’ve spent years with Social Emotional Learning rather than study skills. Our kids have remarkable confidence without achievement. Rather than become confident through action, they’ve become confident through attitude alone. Why ever improve if you’re already pretty great?

Meanwhile, stream music on YouTube and you’ll get ads for Gemini as a study aide. I have no qualms here—except for utter and unquestioning dependence on technology. I mean, we already don’t teach study skills, so why not let AI replace intelligence here too?

By the way, when AI fails the hype as a study aid—I’m sure a constant stream of digital distractions and temptation matter not—who do we blame? The program? The user? The school for not teaching the skills? (Who killed Davey Moore, right?)

Anyways, I’m not as grumpy as this Note might let on. If my students perform better with these tools, maybe I’m just an analogue loving thirty-something. Just because I didn’t use these tools in 2005 doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use them (at that age) in 2026.

And to quote Forest Gump, that’s about all I have to say about that.