What your child actually does on PrepShorts

A study session, described

Your child opens the chapter their class is on, picks the next topic, and watches a short video — ten or eleven minutes — made from the exact pages of their NCERT textbook. The book’s own excerpt and figures sit beside the player. When the book has an activity (“measure your pencil, fill Table 5.2”), the index beside the video marks it: pause there, do it with a real ruler, and press play. PrepShorts treats the doing as part of the lesson, not an interruption. At the end there is a five-question check. Video watched plus check passed — the topic is covered, and the next one is waiting. That whole loop takes about fifteen minutes.

Screen time, by design

We are careful about the difference between time spent and topics understood. PrepShorts has no infinite feed, no autoplay to the next video, no streaks that punish a missed evening, and no notifications at all — the product never sends a message to a child’s phone. A session naturally ends when the topic does. If your child is on PrepShorts for forty minutes, that’s two or three topics genuinely closed — and their dashboard will show exactly which ones.

How you see progress

Open your child’s progress page with them: every chapter is a row of small cells, one per topic — filled when covered, outlined when pending, marked when weak. The dashboard also names, in plain words, what to carry on with and what to revise first. If their school is on PrepShorts, teachers see the same map for their subjects and the school sends term reports; nothing about your child is visible to other families or students. The details are in the privacy policy and on the child-safety page.

What it costs

For a student, nothing — an account is free and stays free. A school pays ₹25,000 a year + GST for all its classes (schools joining now pay ₹15,000 + GST for their first year), and any change to that is announced to schools in writing and in advance; no child’s study history will ever be locked behind a payment. There is no advertising and nothing to buy inside the product, so a free student account does not mean your child is the product.

If your school isn’t on PrepShorts

Your child can still use everything: every video plays with no account at all, and signing in with a Google account — skipping the school code — keeps their progress across the full library. If the school joins later, the code is added from the “Link your school” card on their dashboard and the existing progress connects to the class roster intact. If you’d like the school to know about PrepShorts, point the office at the for-schools page — registration takes ten minutes of their time.

How to help at home

• Keep the printed book open next to the phone. The video constantly points at pages and figures; the pairing is the method.
• Let the activities happen. When the video reaches a measurement or a table, pausing to do it with the kitchen scale and the ruler is the lesson.
• Ask about the weak topics, not the scores. “What’s on your revision list?” is a better dinner question than “what did you get?”
• Encourage doubts. A doubt goes straight to the class teacher, pinned to the exact moment of the video. Asking is the skill.