Knowt: The Study Tool That Said "Hold My Beer" to Quizlet

I haven't written about specific tools very often. But know that when I do, it's because something stopped me cold and I couldn't not share it.

I was at TCEA in February, doing what I always do at conferences between sessions: wandering the expo floor with the energy of a golden retriever who has just been let off the leash. I'm intrigued by all of the new shiny things that people show off, so I'm genuinely intrigued by finding things I believe could have a meaningful impact, and I stay away from those who are selling snake oil.

I have seen a lot of edtech demos. I have nodded politely at a lot of tools that were essentially slight variations on something that already existed. I have smiled and taken the tote bag, and moved on.

I did not move on from Knowt.

What I watched at that demo booth was the moment I realized that Quizlet had stopped, high-fived each other, and called it done, while the team at Knowt looked at everything Quizlet built, said "hold my beer," and kept going.

I got so excited about what I saw that when Knowt opened their initial cohort of brand ambassadors, the Knowt Knights, I applied. Because I believe in this tool the way I believe in the best tools I have ever used in my classroom: not because someone paid me to, but because I have watched it work.

Here is what I saw. And here is why it matters.

First, Let's Talk About Why Retrieval Practice Actually Works

Before I tell you what Knowt does, I want to make sure you understand why retrieval practice is worth caring about in the first place: because "flashcards" has become such a generic concept that most teachers have stopped thinking about why it works and just assume it either does or doesn't for a given student.

The research is unambiguous. Retrieval practice, the act of actively recalling information from memory rather than passively rereading it, is one of the most effective learning strategies ever studied. A landmark paper by Roediger and Karpicke published in Psychological Science found that students who studied material once and then practiced retrieving it performed significantly better on tests a week later than students who restudied the material three additional times.

The reason is neurological. Every time you successfully retrieve a piece of information from memory, you strengthen the neural pathway that connects you to that information. You are not just reviewing what you know; you are rebuilding the architecture of how you know it. The memory becomes more accessible, more durable, and more connected to other things you know.

Spaced repetition takes this one step further. Rather than massing practice into a single session, spaced repetition spreads retrieval attempts over time, showing you material again right before you are about to forget it, which is precisely when retrieval is most effortful and therefore most beneficial (I apologize to the staff members who gave the same AVID PD sessions each year on cornell notes, I should not have rolled my eyes, you were right, I was WAY wrong). The spacing effect has been studied for over a century, going back to Hermann Ebbinghaus and his work on the forgetting curve (yes, that is a Wikipedia citation, because the rest of the literature is smarter than my brain can handle). The research conclusion is consistent: distributed practice over time produces dramatically better long-term retention than cramming. I'm not a stats guy, but that P is pretty significant.

This is not new information. Teachers have known that flashcards work for a long time. What has changed is what we can do with them.

What Knowt Actually Does

Here is where the "hold my beer" moment comes in.

Quizlet built a genuinely useful tool for creating and studying flashcard sets. It works. A lot of students have learned a lot of things with it. I am not here to bury Quizlet. I'm the opposite of Brutus in Julius Caesar; I have come to praise what Quizlet did, not to bury it.

But Knowt looked at what flashcards could become and kept building.

Notes from anything. Knowt can generate study materials from virtually any source: uploaded PDFs, pasted text, YouTube videos, Google Docs, websites, recorded lectures, you name it. You do not have to build your flashcard sets from scratch. You feed Knowt your content, and it generates the study materials for you. For a teacher, this means the gap between "I have this resource" and "my students can study from this resource" has collapsed to almost nothing.

The lecture recording feature. This one deserves its own moment. You can record your lecture directly in Knowt and save it as a summary note for students. Think about what that means for the student who missed class. Not just a "here are the slides" email. An actual summary of what happened, generated from your voice, ready for them to study from. That is a differentiation tool as much as it is a study tool.

Multiple study modes. Beyond flashcards, Knowt offers a range of practice formats, all built on the same spaced repetition engine underneath. Students are not just flipping cards. They are encountering the same material in multiple modalities, which research consistently shows improves both retention and transfer.

The AP library. For any teacher with AP students, and for any student taking an AP course, Knowt has built an extensive library of AP practice materials. Practice tests, study sets, and review content across AP courses that students can access independently. If I were still teaching APUSH, AP Government, or AP Comparative Government, this library alone would make Knowt essential.

And Then There's Kai

I saved this for last because it is the feature that made me stop walking at TCEA and stand at that booth longer than I planned.

Kai is Knowt's AI study companion. And Kai does two things that I have never seen any other study tool attempt.

The first is a podcast. Kai can generate a personalized audio podcast from your study material — a genuine listen-while-you-commute, listen-while-you-do-dishes, listen-while-you-exist summary of what you need to know. For auditory learners, for students who struggle to sit and read, for anyone who processes information better through listening than looking at a screen, this is not a gimmick. This is accessibility built into the study experience.

The second is a phone call. You can take your materials, and Kai will "call" your students on their devices and have an interactive conversation with them about their study material. Not a quiz. Not a recording. A conversation. Kai asks questions, listens to responses, follows up, and adapts. It is retrieval practice delivered through the most natural conversational interface a teenager already uses: their phone. The best part, it is the type of multimodal showcase of learning that our students need.

I have watched students who resist every other form of studying pick up that call and stay on it. Because it does not feel like studying. It feels like talking. And somewhere in that conversation, the neural pathways are getting stronger.

How I Use It

I use Knowt in two distinct ways, and I think both are worth sharing.

The first is teacher-initiated. I build resources, share them with my classes, and track student progress through the dashboard (I use the data to check my intuition). I can see who is studying, how often, which terms they are struggling with, and where the gaps are before I see those gaps on an assessment. That kind of formative data: voluntary, student-generated, real, is far more useful to me than a lot of what I get from formal assessments.

The second is student-initiated. I have taught my students how to use Knowt independently, without a teacher-created class. They can upload their own notes, generate their own study materials, and use Kai on their own time. The goal is not dependency on my resources. The goal is to give them a tool powerful enough that they actually want to use it.

That distinction matters to me. The best tools I put in students' hands are the ones they keep using after they leave my classroom.

A Note on Transparency

As I mentioned above, I applied to become a Knowt Knight, a member of Knowt's inaugural ambassador cohort, because I saw this tool at TCEA and could not stop thinking about it. And gurrrrrl, He said yes!

Nobody asked me to write this post. Nobody paid me to write this post. I applied to be an ambassador because I believe in the tool and wanted to support something that has genuinely supported my students.

If you want to try it, it is free to get started. Which, given everything it does, still surprises me every time I say it.

Go Try It

If you try it and love it, which you will, come find me. Tag me @justrimmey on Twitter or @teachersplaiground on Instagram. I want to see what your students make of Kai.

And if your students start calling YOU on the phone to quiz YOU on the content because they think it's fun, you're welcome. And also, I'm sorry. But mostly you're welcome.