Late at night, a student studies for a big test the following morning. After hours of getting frustrated with apps that do not have the content they are looking for, they come across High 5 Wizard and find questions just like the ones on the test. It is not a coincidence that there are similar questions, for AP United States History (APUSH) teacher Curtis Lewis spent thousands of hours perfecting his app to provide the ideal studying tool for his students and 30 thousand others nationwide.
He works with teachers and students to create in-depth study guides for 10 different AP subjects, including over 11 thousand multiple-choice questions.
Lewis was motivated to develop his app after asking his students about using their phones to study. The app was inspired by his students and other educators with the same goal to help students in
their success.
The student response was that most popular study tools like Quizlet or Kahoot do not have the right questions or are not intuitive enough to effectively study a subject.
This drove him to look for alternatives. “We wanted to find something that would actually be productive, it would be handy, that you could use it as a study guide,” Lewis said.
Eventually, he settled on making his own study app, hiring professionals to do the programming, while he wrote the questions for the history courses. The other courses on the site, such as AP Calculus AB and AP Bio, were a “community effort,” ac- cording to Lewis. He asked the teachers of those courses to help him write the questions, to provide a better experience for the students.
The students have found great success using High 5 Wizard, especially Lewis’s own APUSH students, who use the app to study for upcoming tests and also make use of other functionalities of the app, like essay questions and rubrics.
Senior Maddie Grove used the app to review for APUSH, and continues to use it for other classes. “It’s especially helpful because it gives you exposure to the different kinds of questions that you’ll actually be asked on the actual AP tests, like an in-depth analysis of what you did wrong. or why certain questions are correct,” Grove said.
High 5 Wizard acts like a one-stop shop for all studying needs. After the app was published on the app store, it got raving reviews. At the moment the app has five stars and the reviews validate that rating.
Some are saying that they really enjoyed how detailed the material is and how the app is not too overly complicated to navigate.
Senior Colin Alsop compares it to other popular study apps by describing it as being “a lot more condensed. Everything’s all in the app, I don’t have to go hunting different places to get the stuff that I need.”
The application has been growing considerably, even catching the attention of the local news. With so much growth comes financial strains, and there are a lot of costs involved in maintaining
and growing the app.
Currently, Lewis is asking for $15,000 in donations to be able to keep the app going, and accessible to students who need study
help.
Those interested in helping Lewis in his journey of getting students in the position of earning college credit, can find flyers across campus to participate in donating to the cause. Lewis wants to give students the opportunity to create a firm path for their
future.
For Poway High students the app is free but for everybody else it costs $7.99. High 5 Wizard, is in the AppStore and Google Play.
Any money donated will be used to keep the app available for others to down- load.
For more information you can look at the High 5 Wizard website (high5wizard.com). The QR code leads you to his gofundme, which is at $12,713 as of March 29.
