[HN Gopher] Show HN: Anki/Duolingo-like app using educational Yo...
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Show HN: Anki/Duolingo-like app using educational YouTube videos
Hi HN, I watch A LOT of educational YouTube videos but wasn't
forgetting a good chunk of the details because I was only really
passively watching. So I made a tool that generates quiz
questions/flashcards from YouTube videos, and uses spaced
repetition like Anki or Duolingo to keep it in memory. Let me know
if you find it cool/useful (or terrible ) or if you want to know a
bit about the details!
Author : kirill5pol
Score : 246 points
Date : 2024-01-26 21:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.platoedu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.platoedu.org)
| sstanfie wrote:
| this looks great!
| vanijzen1 wrote:
| Very cool!
| clairegu123 wrote:
| Nice
| willmeyers wrote:
| The 30 minute limit is unfortunate, but otherwise it looks good.
| Thanks for sharing!
| kirill5pol wrote:
| So far it's basically a heuristic for the video having both
| captions and the token count for generation be reliably under
| the limit, but I am working on making it work for arbitrary
| length videos! I did some tests for 2-3 hour podcasts and it
| worked pretty well
| jacknews wrote:
| Who chooses the videos? It seems ... opinionated.
|
| For example, under 'Physics', we have "The big lie about carbon
| capture', 'Why (toilet) flushing isn't for everyone', 'The
| scientific basis for miracles', etc.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Yeah it's not ideal yet the suggestions under each category I
| just YouTube's own category labels so often it didn't give the
| best results, but it's something I'm working on!
| dotancohen wrote:
| Perhaps log the videos that users upload and suggest the most
| common ones?
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Yep planning on doing that but didn't have enough videos
| uploaded to "fill up" the categories before posting the
| Show HN, so I just scripted some stuff based on the YouTube
| suggestions from some YouTube channels I watch.
|
| One of my future plans is to actually train a BERT model to
| limit the video suggestions to something that actually is
| useful instead of clickbait... I have 2 different accounts
| on YouTube just so watching random videos on 1 won't
| pollute the suggestions from the other
| dotancohen wrote:
| Perhaps allow the user to integrate with his YouTube history?
| Does YouTube have an API for that?
| snordgren wrote:
| When I saw Anki/Duolingo in the bio I assumed it was for language
| learning, but this is a great idea!
|
| I too often watch these kinds of videos without really retaining
| a lot. This is a perfect complement to turn infotainment into
| time well spent, or at least, less wasted.
| jerpint wrote:
| Same! Maybe someone could do some language learning on top of
| all the videos we consume on YouTube?
| patall wrote:
| Languagereactor.com seems to implement some form of that
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Yes!! I definitely spend a little too much time on YouTube
| myself, would you mind sharing what kind of content
| (categories) you watch in a pm? I'd love to get some better
| ideas of what kind of material to tune the question generations
| on
| danielwyb wrote:
| Nice! Would be great to use on longer videos and focus on
| specific topics of the video.
| sidwrestler wrote:
| I love this new Plato app, it's useful and I educational. The
| interface is also very clean
| husarcik wrote:
| What algorithm do you use for spaced repetition?
| kirill5pol wrote:
| I have a fairly simple implementation of the SM-2 algorithm,
| and just making the assumption that if you answered the
| question correctly then you have "perfect recall". This isn't
| exactly correct but I have been using it myself and seems to
| still be pretty nice.
|
| But for the next version I want to use something called
| knowledge tracing to determine an estimated level of recall to
| then change the spacing
| jarrett-ye wrote:
| I recommend the new algorithm of Anki:
| https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki
| Davana wrote:
| You just saved millions of students life's, A great tool that
| just solved a problem that existed but no one ever noticed
| totetsu wrote:
| I want to make flash card form everything I look up this way.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Any particular type of content you're thinking of? I'm
| currently working on adding podcasts since they're pretty
| similar to YouTube videos, but I'm sure with some tuning I
| could see if it works for other things
| totetsu wrote:
| Podcast is definitely one. But I'm not sure how one could get
| the real salient points out of some of the philosophy podcast
| I listen to without listening carefully the first time and
| writing them down.. Another would be for example when I ask
| Chatgpt how to do something in nvim.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Mind sending me an pm? (my email's in my bio) I'd love to
| try it out with some of the podcasts/nvim chatgpt responses
| you mentioned and add it to your account!
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Any particular type of content you're thinking of?
|
| When the wife is mad and ranting, can you email me a summary
| at the end? With a quiz for the important parts.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Now that is a strong need haha, I think will have to be on
| the Plato premium + plan
| dotancohen wrote:
| You've got your first customer!
| totetsu wrote:
| Oh god. I did take notes during my last break up.. Maybe I
| could review those too
| pawelduda wrote:
| I like the idea, but seeing how many new accounts added fake
| comments makes me a bit suspicious :)
| alexander2002 wrote:
| I really dont like the new accounts stigma due to statistical
| reasons but to each their own!
| bobmaxup wrote:
| Is NLU really this reliable yet? I tried making some scripts like
| this with LLMs, and it seemed to do very poorly. So, I abandoned
| the effort.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| I did quite a bit of that too, I really had trouble getting it
| to generate good content from scratch but here it's using the
| transcripts directly.
|
| I'm guessing it only really works well on scripts that are
| meant to be educational, because there already are "questions"
| implicit in the transcript of the video because that's the best
| way to present information when teaching something
| yogurtboy wrote:
| This is amazing! I tried a couple of videos and the questions
| seem pretty relevant and answerable (is there a better word for
| how a question is worded clearly and the provided answers seem
| clearly distinct and one of them is obviously correct), which is
| really hard to do by hand, much less by AI.
|
| I know you've addressed the video selection in the playlists, but
| I would highly suggest doing something to get it to differentiate
| "educational entertainment" videos (I notice a lot of Real
| Engineering and Economics Explained and CGP Grey videos) and
| actual education videos: primary-source explainers from teachers
| and subject-matter experts. The information density in the latter
| is way higher, and I think people overestimate the educational
| value of the former.
| ruune wrote:
| > and I think people overestimate the educational value of the
| former.
|
| I disagree. Some people might overestimate how in-depth the
| information is, but the educational value of these videos lies
| in giving someone a basic understanding of something they
| otherwise wouldn't have learnt about at all. The lower
| information density helps making the video easier to understand
| and thus easier to consume, compared to something like a Havard
| class.
|
| If you want to learn something in-depth, an actual class, a
| book, etc. will of course always be better, but if that's
| neither required nor wanted, the infotainment is just fine.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Yeah, I feel it's not ideal, but at least it's better than
| doom scrolling, and especially if it's a field that you're
| not familiar with having some simple explanations is still
| useful as a starting point
| alexander2002 wrote:
| One point is if the end-user understand it is just
| infotainment and not a concrete guide.For example,People
| became "experts" on covid thorugh some videos that spread
| misinformation and became hardcore fanatics.This is just one
| example of many.
| balaji1 wrote:
| "educational entertainment" videos are way too many, way too
| popular and binge-able - much more recommended by YT's AI.
| Actual education are much harder to discover on YouTube.
|
| I have been wanting to build a YT front-end that lets me
| control how many "new" videos are recommended. New videos are
| the time-sinks.
|
| Instead this new FE should make me re-watch so I absorb and
| retain better - maybe thru more Q&A like OP's platoedu or even
| make me write out some notes. Then I am forced to curate videos
| and maybe be more productive.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| This is a problem I've had too, my current solution is to
| have multiple profiles on YouTube so whenever I click on a
| random video one it doesn't pollute my other education heavy
| account. Also just removing videos helps... but even then
| YouTube still pushes edu-tainment over harder educational
| videos.
|
| One of my ideas that's on the backburner is build a BERT
| classifier to separate between Educational, edu-tainment, and
| random, then use that to filter suggestions from the ones of
| people that use Plato
|
| Anyway if you have any good suggestions for better
| educational content I'd love to add that to Plato over the
| categories I have now!
| balaji1 wrote:
| Multiple YT profiles is a smart hack! And also, great work
| on the app!
|
| The YT algo is pretty good - it catches on to what I want
| to follow and magnifies (ie suggest more content on) that
| topic. But it never pushes me to educational videos.
|
| I suspect educational videos are best to watch on Coursera.
| I know people who just open up Coursera and start listening
| on commutes, etc - instead of infi-scrolling.
|
| The pedagogical (instruction techniques, content structure,
| etc) aspect in those vids is different. I wonder if there
| is inspiration for creators/topics from Coursera?
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| This. I don't think most educational content on YouTube is
| worth remembering (or the best way to spend your time in the
| first place).
|
| So I'd be cautious about an app that helps you memorize the
| contents of said videos. You might end up with a lot of
| superficial, clickbaity pieces of knowledge.
| zadokshi wrote:
| I invite you to share your own superior knowledge to the
| masses via your own YouTube videos so we can learn from
| you. Until then, I'll learn from what is made available for
| others. Post back here once you've created some better
| content so we know where to look.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Papers, textbooks, tech talks, university lectures.
|
| That's where you'll find actual knowledge and not in high
| production value videos which have to be financially
| viable for their creators.
|
| It's hardly a secret that Youtube has a problem funding
| long form videos with a certain depth and instead favors
| clickbaity, short material. No reason to be offended.
|
| As a rule of thumb I'd say everything with a sponsored
| segment is entertainment but too shallow for education.
| balaji1 wrote:
| > Papers, textbooks, tech talks, university lectures
|
| Perfect list. Tech talks, university lectures (recorded
| videos) are almost as consumable as YT edu-tainment
| videos. Papers, books and textbooks are accessible but
| requires more motivation.
|
| To the parent comment (zadokshi), if YT content is
| education, why don't the biggest creators make 5-10
| videos on a topic, back-to-back? 5-10 is minimum for
| learning, example Coursera content - I'm not even
| comparing to semester/yearlong coursework at schools.
| Because there isn't a demand or incentive for that on YT.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Thank you!!
|
| Yes, this is actually something I've been thinking about quite
| a bit, I actually built out the playlist feature just this
| morning because it's easier to "show" how Plato works, but I
| basically just wrote some scripts to get some good enough
| videos for the demo
|
| If you have any good channel suggestions I'd love to add them
| :))
|
| One of the things I have on the backburner for now is building
| a BERT classifier to decide whether the video is Educational,
| Edu-tainment, or not educational at all and have a more
| customizable video suggestion than YouTube has (I actually have
| 2 accounts on YouTube, just so I can watch some random video on
| 1 without it polluting my education/learning heavy one)
|
| One thing though, is I actually think both have their merit,
| while I agree the actual educational content is pretty
| different, the educational entertainment is a nice alternative
| to TikTok or IG reels when you just want to mindlessly scroll,
| I think there still often some useful content there, especially
| if you don't have any background in the area
| dayjaby wrote:
| > classifier to decide whether the video is Educational, Edu-
| tainment, or not educational at all
|
| I'm a bit surprised to only see like 3 questions for a 14
| minute video of quantum mechanics. For educational videos
| with very dense information, is there a way to raise the
| questions per video rate?
|
| Looking forward to see MIT OpenCourseware videos supported.
| Right now they are too long :D
| dotancohen wrote:
| Amazing, thank you. It even works great for music videos, I never
| appreciated the poetic lyrical context of Pantera before. ))
|
| Small bug, the service requires a youtube.com URL and cannot
| handle an m.youtube.com URL, as happens when copying from a phone
| web browser or NewPipe. Perhaps you could support the mobile URL
| as well.
|
| Thanks, great work!
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Well that music video lyrics work is a very unexpected pleasant
| surprise! :)
|
| Thanks for catching that! Will fix that!
| sebastianvoelkl wrote:
| really cool. A while back I've build this database of 1000+ hand-
| selected educational YouTube videos, so I'm going to try out a
| few of them to put in this tool :) https://www.edutube.app/
| kirill5pol wrote:
| This is awesome! Did you hand select all 1000? I wanted to hand
| select for the categories to get some better starting
| recommendations but it was taking too long so I was a bit lazy
| and just scripted it...
| sebastianvoelkl wrote:
| Yeah I literally hand-selected all of them to remain the
| quality of videos that I wanted
| kirill5pol wrote:
| If you have a list of the IDs of the videos (and maybe
| categories) I can bulk add them! If you want to discuss a
| collab of some sort feel free to email me!
| yterdy wrote:
| If this works as I expect it to, it'll be something I've been
| hoping to see for a long time. Thank your for sharing it with us!
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Do you have any specific type of content that you were trying
| to learn? Right now it's still pretty early/demo stage, but
| please pm me (email in bio), I'll see if I can tune it better
| to your use case!
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| How do you deal with YouTube Terms of Service for extracting
| transcripts?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| International copyright agreements, like the Bern Convention,
| allow usage of content for educational purposes, as long as
| you're not replacing the original.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| This is fantastic! Is there a way to donate? This is the kind of
| software I want to see in the world!
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Pm me (email in bio) and I can come up with some sort of
| premium plan haha (I'm thinking unlimited time length for
| videos + podcasts/other material) but very open to suggestions!
| rollinDyno wrote:
| I've always wanted to do this for Wikipedia, it could even be a
| Wikimedia add-on.
|
| However, I have recently transitioned towards becoming better at
| compiling information quickly rather than spending a chunk of my
| day memorizing facts that I am not quite sure will be useful.
| ListeningPie wrote:
| What do you use to compile information and do you keep track of
| sources?
| snakey wrote:
| I've been doing something similar. If I read a blog post /
| paper, etc. where I learn a lot on a topic I'm interested in, I
| will catalogue a pdf of it in Obsidian with a tag and an
| optional note. This makes it easy to access information locally
| very quickly and I find I learn a lot more because if I forget
| something, I open up the resource, read the doc and, come out
| learning a little more. A kind of convoluted version of spaced-
| repetition but more passive learning.
|
| Granted, I'm aware this probably won't scale to many topics but
| a few years and hundreds of notes later, it's still working
| well for me.
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| so how does this worK? you take the video and extract captions
| from it? and feed it to GPT? i am sorry, can you clarify?
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Pretty much! I'm working on doing some fancier stuff with
| knowledge tracing but was out of scope for the mvp
| puzzydunlop wrote:
| This is very cool! I'm trying to do something technically similar
| by using LLMs to summarize the meeting transcript from youtube
| (https://parths-newsletter-78dbcb.beehiiv.com/).
|
| Right now I'm doing this manually by copy/pasting into ChatGPT
| but I want to automate this aspect. I'm not very technical so any
| guidance you could provide would be helpful :)
| allenz wrote:
| https://www.videogist.co was mentioned previously on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38555629
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Pm me (email in bio) I can send you some scripts and point you
| in the right direction!
| hellcow wrote:
| I like the idea. I'm learning European Portuguese, so I added a
| video but unfortunately got an error that there were no
| subtitles. The subtitles for the video in question are auto-
| generated, so maybe that's the reason? Would be great if I could
| use this for foreign language studies.
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Auto generated captions do work but unfortunately only English
| for now, it would be pretty easy to add other languages but I
| just haven't had time to implement it yet. Feel free to pm me
| with the YouTube video I'll try to see what's the problem
| (email in bio)
| tayo42 wrote:
| What exactly are you looking to do with YouTube and language? I
| might have a github repo you could be interested in. It takes
| YouTube videos, creates transcripts, translations and creates
| audio anki flash cards from it with audio on the front and text
| on the back
| albert_e wrote:
| This is a cool idea.
|
| I wanted to have a bookmarking site that allows me to add my own
| time-stamped notes to YouTube videos I watch for learning
| purposes.
|
| I was using OneNote without any such features.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Oh my god, this is something I've wanted to make or see made for
| a while now! I'll definitely be using this, the design looks
| straight forward and good too!
|
| Any way to self-host to get around the 30 minute video limit?
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Yes! The 30 min limit was just a heuristic to make simplify
| some parts of the generation (almost always captions exist, so
| no need to run whisper, and 30 min is 4-5k tokens so very
| little chance of going over and needing multiple generations)
|
| Pm me (email in bio) and I can enable longer videos for you
| sonovice wrote:
| Great project! I had to laugh at the very first question I got,
| though: "Who is the sponsor of the video?"
| leoff wrote:
| Please drink your verification can to use this website.
| andruby wrote:
| I love this!
|
| I wanted to build a "yt-campus" with a curated list of
| educational youtube channels.
|
| This does it better, thank you.
|
| One thing you could consider: allow your community to discuss the
| video's. I've always wanted to have higher quality discussions
| about the Engineering videos I watch, and the YouTube comments
| really disappoint. Would you consider adding that? How about
| keeping your own personal notes per video?
| pavelboyko wrote:
| Looks great! On a related note, I developed a similar free tool
| [1] designed for K12 teachers, primary focusing on curation and
| discovery of educational videos for classroom use.
|
| 1. https://hulahoop.ai
| qntmfred wrote:
| timestamps on the transcript should be clickable to seek to that
| time in the video
| kirill5pol wrote:
| I think there was some weirdness with resetting the iframe of
| the YouTube video when I first tried that, but I'll try to
| figure out a workaround!
| yungeeker wrote:
| This looks somehow like my app ClipMemo. The difference is that
| my app require you to create cards (called Memo in the app) by
| yourself. You select the start & end timestamp and you can
| review, repeat the clip. Besides YouTube it supports local video
| or other platform like Bilibili, China's counterpart of YouTube.
|
| I'm not sure wheather my idea works or your work does. I'm also
| curious about which workaround solve this problem better. You can
| find ClipMemo on App Store.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| I love this, great work!
|
| One note: After submitting a video and answering the questions,
| the "New Videos to Watch" section appears to be videos similar to
| the one I uploaded, but may have _not_ been uploaded to PlatoEdu.
| My expectation was that these were videos others had _already_
| uploaded and for which questions had already been generated. So I
| was surprised when I clicked on one and it started uploading. Had
| I known it was going to be added I wouldn 't have clicked on it,
| as I'd first want to watch it to verify the content is high
| quality.
|
| Again, great work. Bookmarked!
| kirill5pol wrote:
| Yep, still working out UX kinks!
|
| Having the user wait for generations was kinda a pain when I
| was using it myself, but the upload mean that's its now
| "instant" when you get to questions. I'll try to fix this today
| or tomorrow!
|
| I'm thinking that it should generate the video content
| immediately but not add it to your account and instead ask the
| user.
| sebnun wrote:
| Neat. I built a web app to learn languages that used podcasts and
| YouTube transcriptions too. The problem with YouTube was that
| their API was very limiting, so I ended up having to use a proxy
| and some unofficial API to scrape the videos. The whole thing
| felt very sketchy so I ended up removing the whole YouTube
| functionality and just focused on podcasts
| (https://langturbo.com)
|
| I hope you have better luck.
| realty_geek wrote:
| I believe readlang has similar functionality.
| kristianp wrote:
| Seems a great application of AI as part of a structured app,
| instead of just a chatbot.
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