Students stay focused with Smart Stacks

A new educational product brightens up index cards and aids in heightened student learning and retention. Smart Stacks are innovative index cards new to the educational aid market and the Columbia area.
Smart Stacks are index cards unique in design and color. Each card is a medium hue of green with a distinctive shape in the center shaded in a lighter green color. The reverse side of the card is yellow with lines for writing.
The product is used like a normal index card in that one writes a word, fact or formula on one side of the card and the definition on the back. “It’s geared toward anyone who uses index cards,” said Max Prokell, founder and CEO of Venta Marketing. “We’ve done research and found that second grade is about when people start using index cards because you have to write on the front and back what you’re learning.” Prokell said learners at any stage from second-graders to adults can benefit from using Smart Stacks.
Aside from helping learners in general, Smart Stacks have specific indications for students with learning disabilities such as ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, autism and Meares-Irlen Syndrome. Smart Stacks may also lower the frequency of migraine headaches while studying. “There’s a lot of research as to what helps these students learn,” Prokell said, “and all [of the features present on the index cards] lends to helping these students.”
Prokell and business partner Connor McMahan began Smart Stacks for a 2009 class project at the Robin School of Business at the University of Richmond. The project was for a final entrepreneurship course in which the objective was to create a company. With the goal of creating a company to help students find a better way to learn, they decided to create an educational aid with the capability to help students learn faster, retain more and focus longer. Thus, the two created the concept of Smart Stacks.
After extensive research and collaboration with the department of psychology at the University of Richmond, Prokell and McMahan learned that color and shapes play a key role in helping students learn and retain information. Through this, they discovered that the colors green and yellow increase brain activity and learning potential. “It zeros your focus in, and it keeps your mind active,” said Prokell, who now lives in Columbia.
The color green has been proven to relax the mind due to its association with nature. When relaxed, students are able to focus and study for longer periods of time. Yellow has been associated with energy and happiness. These two feelings help to get students’ attention and increase understanding. Yellow paper is also better on one’s eyes than white paper and reduces glare. This, in turn, aids in higher readability. “Through our research, we found that yellow is used on legal pads for that very reason,” Prokell said.
Distinctive shapes are also used on Smart Stacks to avoid a tedious learning environment. Because the 10 different shapes placed in the middle of the card are a slightly lighter shade of green, the mind is kept active as the background changes with each term the students are learning. The lighter shade of green in the shapes also draws focus toward the word one is studying. This is a similar technique to highlighting key terms within a text.
Because Prokell and McMahan’s class project was sound in terms of feasibility and concept, their professor encouraged them to enter a business competition in Richmond. “After winning a cash prize at the competition, we got a patent,” Prokell said. They then used that funding along with their own personal investments to manufacture and import the product from China. Smart Stacks were manufactured in 2010, and the website was built the same year.
Prokell now owns 100 percent of the company and handles all day-to-day operations as president and CEO. McMahan is still involved with the company as CFO. Prokell and his wife, Austin, moved to Columbia last December after he completed his senior season of football for the University of Richmond. Austin is a graduate of Rock Bridge High School and the University of Missouri.
Prokell said they “basically launched the product in April 2011 at the National School Supply and Equipment Association convention in San Antonio, Texas.” Prokell was a featured speaker at the conference, and as a result Smart Stacks was able to create interest with educational retail stores and catalogs throughout the country. “We’re just waiting to see how it goes with sales, and it would be great to market it to even more retail stores that sell educational products.”
Smart Stacks are carried at Classroom Connection in Jefferson City and Mardel in the Kansas City area. “Education is a big deal in Columbia,” said Prokell. “It’s a good place for Smart Stacks to be because people support education, and that’s what we’re all about.”