Less than twenty-four hours after unveiling two major new tools to help teachers and students (see GOOGLE UNVEILS TWO BIG TOOLS FOR SCHOOLS: “ASSIGNMENTS” & “ORIGINALITY REPORTS”), Google announced yet another one.

They gave Socratic, an app they had bought, a big Artificial Intelligence upgrade, and it sounds like it can do a lot (read more at Google’s post, When students get stuck, Socratic can help):

Students can take a photo of a question or use their voice to ask a question, and we’ll find the most relevant resources from across the web. If they’re struggling to understand textbook content or handouts, they can take a picture of the page and check out alternative explanations of the same concepts.

To help students working on complex problems, we’ve built and trained algorithms that look at a student’s question and automatically identify the relevant underlying concepts. From there, we can find the videos, concept explanations, and online resources to help them work through their questions. For students who want to learn even more, we break down the concepts into smaller, easy-to-understand lessons.

To help students who are reviewing what they’ve learned or studying for a test, we’ve worked with educators to create subject guides on over 1,000 higher education and high school topics. It takes two taps to look up any topic they need to brush up on, get the key points, and then go deeper with helpful resources on the web.

 

I was particularly intrigued by how it appears they handle math problems.  I might be wrong, but, unlike other apps that actually solve the problems for you (see New “Volley” App Looks Like A “PhotoMath” For…Everything), it looks like Socratic might act as more of a coach to help you solve them.  Let me know if I’m wrong.

Even though it’s for more than just math, I’m adding this info to The Best Apps, Online Tools & Other Resources For Math.