Practice questions from a textbook page in about a minute

Testing yourself is one of the best-supported ways to learn, and one of the least used. The reason is simple: writing practice questions from a textbook takes longer than reading the chapter again. Study Shot removes that step. You photograph a page, and Claude writes up to 20 multiple-choice questions about it, from beginner to advanced, then marks your answers and explains each one. This guide shows how, and how to get questions that are worth answering.

Why bother with practice questions at all

Most students revise by rereading and highlighting. It feels productive because the material looks familiar. But familiar is not the same as remembered. A large review of study techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rated practice testing as one of only two techniques with high usefulness across ages, subjects and test types. Rereading and highlighting were rated low.

The effect holds up over time, which is what matters for an exam. In Roediger and Karpicke (2006), students who reread a passage did slightly better on a test five minutes later, but students who had tested themselves did clearly better two days and a week later.

The catch has always been the effort. Making 20 good questions from one page, with wrong answers that are tempting rather than silly, can take half an hour. That is the part Study Shot does for you.

What you need

A Study Shot account. Open studyshot.vlvd.net and choose Create account: your name, email and a password.
A page to study. A textbook page, a printed handout, your own notes, a diagram or a photo of the whiteboard all work.
A phone or computer. On a phone you can take the photo directly; on a computer you can choose a photo you already have. JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF files up to 5 MB are accepted, and they are shrunk before upload, so an ordinary phone photo is fine.

How to make practice questions from a textbook page

In your library, press Make a new quiz.
Press Take photo to use the camera, or Choose photo to pick one you have. The app's own advice is the best advice: "Hold the page flat and fill the frame."
Choose how many questions you want, from 1 to 20. It starts at 20.
Choose who writes them. Opus 5.5 gives "Deeper questions. Takes a little longer." Sonnet 5.5 is "Faster. Great for quick review."
Press Write. You will see "Claude is reading your page…" and the app warns it can take up to a minute.
Answer one question at a time. Each has four options, A to D. Pick one and press Submit.
Read the feedback. You see Correct or Not quite., the right answer, and a short explanation. Press Continue, and on the last one, Finish quiz.

The questions come in order of difficulty: the beginner ones first, then intermediate, then advanced, split as evenly as the number you chose allows. So the first few check that you know the terms, and the last few ask you to use them.

A worked example: one page of a history textbook

Say your history class is on the causes of the First World War, and tomorrow there is a short test on one textbook page. Here is the whole session, start to finish.

Read the page once, properly. Five minutes. Do not highlight. Just make sure you follow the argument.
Photograph it. Lay the book flat by a window, hold the phone straight above it and fill the frame with the one page. Press Take photo.
Pick 12 questions and Opus 5.5. Twelve divides evenly, so you get four beginner, four intermediate and four advanced questions. The page is new to you, so the deeper writer is worth the wait.
Answer without looking back. The beginner questions might ask which countries were in an alliance. The advanced ones might ask why one event turned a regional crisis into a wider war. Close the book while you answer.
Read every explanation, even on questions you got right. A lucky guess on option C is not knowledge.
Check your results. Say you score 9 out of 12, graded Good, with all four beginner questions right and two advanced ones wrong. Open Look at these again. Both misses are about the same part of the argument.
Reread only that paragraph, then explain it out loud in two sentences.
Retake tomorrow morning, before the test, with Retake quiz from your library.

The whole thing takes about twenty minutes, and you walk into the test knowing which part you were weak on and having fixed it.

Getting good questions out of a photo

The questions can only be as good as what Claude can read on the page. A few habits help:

One page, flat, filling the frame. Curved pages near the spine and pages photographed at an angle lose words at the edges.
Good light, no shadow of your phone. Glossy textbook paper reflects overhead lights; tilt the book slightly if you see a white patch.
Choose dense pages. A page with definitions, a worked example or a labelled diagram gives better questions than a chapter opener with one photo and a quote.
Use Opus 5.5 for material you find hard, and Sonnet 5.5 for a quick check on something you mostly know.

If the photo is blank or blurry, the app does not invent a quiz. It says: "That photo doesn't show anything to study. Try a clearer shot of the page." Take the photo again, closer and steadier.

Reading your results

When you finish, the results show a percentage, a grade and a score for each level, so you can see whether you slipped on the basics or only on the advanced questions. The grades are Mastered (90% and up), Good (70% and up), Getting there (50% and up) and Needs another try.

Below that, Look at these again lists every question you missed, with your answer and the right answer side by side. That list is your revision plan for the page: reread just those parts, not the whole thing.

Then choose Retake quiz to try the same questions again, Back to library to keep it for later, or Delete quiz. Every quiz and every attempt is saved, and the library card shows your best score so far.

A word on accuracy and privacy

The questions are written by an AI model, so treat them like questions from a helpful classmate: usually right, occasionally not. The explanation after each answer is there so you can check the reasoning against the page. If an answer looks wrong, your textbook wins.

Your photo is sent to Anthropic's Claude to write the questions and is not stored. What Study Shot keeps is your name, email, the quiz and your answers and scores, so you can come back to them.

Frequently asked questions

How many questions should I ask for?

For a dense textbook page, 20 gives you the most coverage. For a short page or a quick check, 6 to 12 is plenty, and a multiple of three gives you an even split across the three levels.

Can I upload a PDF of my textbook?

No. Study Shot works from photos only, in JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF up to 5 MB. Photograph or screenshot one page at a time.

Are the questions always correct?

Not always. They are written by an AI model and are usually right, but the explanation after each answer lets you check the reasoning, and your textbook is the final word.

How many quizzes can I make in one sitting?

You can make up to 10 new quizzes every 10 minutes, which is enough to photograph a whole chapter, one page at a time.

Get started

Try Study Shot: photograph the page you are studying tonight and get up to 20 questions on it, from beginner to advanced.