Studying for the SAT or ACT isn’t fun. But Grockit is trying hard to make it entertaining.
Grockit, whose motto on its homepage is “Get addicted to studying,” bills itself as a social networking site for learning.
With Grockit, teenagers can improve their test skills, in part, by learning from and competing against thousands of other students. They can earn points for doing well in contests such as Grockit’s Speed Challenge Games and for helping other teenagers.
Part of the site is free and for $100 you will have access to far more. There was a review of the site this week in The Wall Street Journal:
SAT Prep on the Web: A) a Game; B) Online Chat; C) All of the Above
You can also watch a WSJ video about Grockit.
If you’re wondering what’s with the name, Grockit” is a play on the word “grok” which was coined by Robert Heinlein in his book Stranger in a Strange Land. According to Webster, “Grok” means “to understand profoundly and intuitively.
Will Grockit work? Mercifully, my two children are in college so they will never have to take the ACT or SAT again, but I would definitely have tried it out with my son. He hated studying for the SAT, but he loved World of Warcraft, a wildly popular online game. I suspect Grockit would have been a match for him.
Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and She also writes a college blog for CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.