Kilkenny brothers launch app to help pupils track study progress

Two Co Kilkenny brothers and teaching professionals have launched a “fitness tracker app for studying” to help students monitor and improve their studies.

Billed as the first app of its kind, Carl and John Lynch went live with Ekker in September in a bid to help exam-year students who might be under pressure due to missed class time as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Carl, who is a maths teacher and has run a local grinds school for years, said students are “struggling really badly at the minute”.

He believes students want to do well in school and that young people will use the app because it is in a format that is accessible to them.

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“They’re struggling when they go home. They’re a little bit isolated at the moment. I know they have their social media and all the rest, but a lot of them like doing well in school. They really, really want to achieve,” he said.

“This is a support for them in a form they’re very familiar with. The one thing a student always has in their pocket is their phone. We have a rule in school of no phones but if you ask them to take out their phones, they all have it in their pocket. They use them constantly.”

John added that students are “beginning to get worried about the exams next year”, and this app could help alleviate their concerns.

The app, which features study statistics, a grade estimator, an online study club, and live online classes, works exactly like fitness tracker apps.

Students input their subjects, state how long they studied it for and rate the session out of 10. Students can then share their study sessions with a select group of friends, creating a sense of friendly competition, the brothers said.

The Lynch brothers believe this real time data will help students study “smarter not harder”.

“There was an article from a university in America that said if you want to improve something, measure it. That was the genesis of the idea,” John said.

“We’re the first fitness tracker for study. Fitness and workouts is something that a majority of the population does but it’s a voluntary thing, we choose if we want to be fit or not. We all have to study. We’re getting students study fit.”

It is currently free for all students, however the brothers do intend to charge for it in the future, and are considering a price of €4.99 per month from the New Year.

“When Covid started we went online, [and] we made the conscious decision not to charge. We felt there was so much going on and kids were under so much pressure that we looked at what we could do to them. We’re not really out to make a huge killing on it,” Carl added.

For more details see: ekker.ie