Shmoop - Making Learning Digestible

At ISTE 2010 I had the opportunity to meet with Ellen Siminoff, President and CEO of Shmoop. Shmoop, as I've mentioned before, is a provider of free and fee-based learning guides for Literature, Civics, US History, Music, Biographies, and recently added Economics learning guides.

Prior to my meeting with Siminoff I was already a fan of Shmoop as evident by the fact that I link to it from my classroom blog. After my meeting with Siminoff I was convinced that Shmoop has some good ideas about designing learning guides for students. Shmoop's primary goals, according to Siminoff is to make learning as digestible and as mobile as possible. To that end Shmoop designs all of their learning guides to be consumed in chunks rather than in one sitting. Shmoop has also made their learning guides available on Kindle, iPhone, Nook, and Sony Reader.

Of course any meeting with a company would not be complete if I didn't ask for a preview of what their future offerings will entail. Siminoff says that Shmoop users can expect to see learning guides for Mathematics and Science in the near future.

(Footnote, before the meeting I thought I was meeting with another Shmoop employee and I did not do my research on Siminoff. Turns out she's the former senior VP of Yahoo).