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App review by Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Education | Updated April 2014
Learnist

Learnist

Read-only access to sprawling library of crowdsourced content

Learning rating
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Community rating
Based on 1 review
Privacy rating
Not yet rated Expert evaluation by Common Sense
Grades
8–12
Subjects & Skills
Character & SEL, Critical Thinking, College & Career Prep
Great for
Evaluating Media, Social Media
Platforms:  Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
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Take a look inside

4 images
Users can view articles by popularity or by category.
The education section of Learnist has a wide array of articles on topics from classroom management to multiplication tables.
Learnist is visually appealing and easy to navigate, and users can easily save interesting articles to a reading list or share articles via social media.
Unfortunately, the content is uneven: Typos abound, and citation is scarce.

Pros: Images and interface are attractive and engaging; categories and reading list feature make for easy browsing.

Cons: Uneven quality and unintuitive search features make the this read-only experience hard to use for intentional learning.

Bottom Line: Learnist offers great visual style and interesting topics, but the content itself is too brief and too unreliable to result in deep learning.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Some of the most interesting content on Learnist is the content that appears to have been generated by students and their teachers. Unfortunately, features for generating content are only available through the Learnist website, making this app a read-only experience. Using the website, teachers might have their students create their own learnboards on a variety of topics, creating individual entries on different elements of a larger topic, and then students might use the app to explore those learnboards. Students then might add their classmates’ learnboards to their own reading lists. This might be a great way for students and teachers to generate outlines for review or to share resources on multi-step projects. Teachers might also use Learnist as a lesson in citation: Few entries in the library cite their sources extensively, and teachers might create an activity using Learnist to help teach students about the importance of citation in research and writing.

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Standards:

Editor's Note: Learnist is no longer available.

Learnist is a collection of crowdsourced content intended to offer users the chance to explore a world of knowledge. Image- and video-heavy entries fall into broad subject categories and can also be collected into "learnboards," which allow users to create and organize a few entries under a common theme (like how to memorize students’ names or how to search for a job). Users can browse entries by their popularity or by their category, and learnboards and entries can be saved to a reading list for later review.

Learnist has potential to be a more visually appealing Wikipedia, and in many ways it achieves that goal: It’s a great way to browse interesting articles on a wide array of topics by a wide array of authors. But while learnboards and entries often have appealing titles, the content is uneven, brief, and often alarmingly unedited. Additionally, the app lacks features for adding new content, making this a read-only experience for users.

Learnist seems like a far better app for entertainment than for education. It’s a terrific platform for free-form exploration and enrichment; indeed, its short entries and arresting images make it great for falling down the rabbit hole of interesting posts on new and increasingly engaging topics. Learnist shares Wikipedia’s reliance on crowdsourced content without its commitment to citation, leaving users without context and with real questions about the entries’ reliability. 

While the learnboards often have appealing titles, the content is uneven, brief, and often alarmingly unedited. Search features within the app are especially disappointing: A search for “World War II” resulted in some related entries on Franklin Roosevelt and the Warsaw Uprising and then a series of unrelated posts about current events, Area 51, and a paid learnboard on creativity in filmmaking from director Gus Van Sant. Additionally, keep in mind that the crowdsourced nature of the app means students might encounter inappropriate content in the course of seemingly benign searches.

Overall Rating
Engagement

Article titles and images provoke interest and draw the user in, though the articles themselves are extremely brief.

Pedagogy

With little ability to search and even more limited deep content, teaching and learning opportunities are limited to broader glosses on big topics.

Support

Developer website has nice guidance on the intent and best features of the app, but in-app guidance and search features are limited.

Common Sense reviewer
Patricia Monticello Kievlan Foundation/nonprofit member
See how we rate and review

Key Standards Supported

Reading Informational Text

  • RI.8.5

    Analyze in detail the structure of a specific paragraph in a text, including the role of particular sentences in developing and refining a key concept.

  • RI.8.6

    Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.

  • RI.8.8

    Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.

  • RI.9-10.5

    Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).

  • RI.9-10.6

    Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

  • RI.9-10.8

    Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.

  • RI.11-12.5

    Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.

  • RI.11-12.6

    Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.

  • RI.11-12.8

    Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning (e.g., in U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents) and the premises, purposes, and arguments in works of public advocacy (e.g., The Federalist, presidential addresses).

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Community Rating

Featured review by
Jamey B. , Other
Other
Great way to Save Resources
With the updates, I am starting to use Learnist as an online textbook. With their extensions for web browsers I can add content quickly. It does take time to reorganize the content later, but that is a minor issue. The ability to add an content from the web, video, websites, and articles, makes Learnist a great content based tool.
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