With school beginning for me and many others tomorrow, I thought it would be appropriate to post something education related. I had the pleasure of talking with Ana McCullough from Shmoop. Shmoop is an excellent educational resource for any student today; they offer a variety of subjects from history to literature and many more coming soon in the future. I expect Shmoop to be an invaluable resource for myself and many others this school year. You can visit them here.
Who created and developed Shmoop?
One dark and stormy night, our chairman, David Siminoff, was reading The Call of the Wild (by Jack London) to his daughter. He was hoping to convey his undying love of literature while teaching her how to engage with what she was reading. He wanted her to understand the novel from multiple points of view. Suddenly, a light bulb appeared above his head (true story). He saw that learning and the Internet are a match made in heaven. And Shmoop was born. Soon afterwards, Shmoop brought on a lead engineer and a lead content developer, and we began hatching our plans to build Shmoop into a website.
Does Shmoop have any new innovative products or features that will be released in the near future?
Yes, we are always cooking up new ideas in our Shmoop labs. For example, just recently, we launched Shmoop for the iPhone and iPod (www.shmoop.com/iphone-ipod-apps/), and for the Kindle (www.shmoop.com/kindle/). Right now we cannot discuss specifics of features or products in development, but we do want Shmoop to continue to develop and grow. Our goal is to be as helpful as possible, in multiple ways, to students, teachers, and all lovers of learning.
Do you think of Shmoop as a possible self tutoring resource for students?
Yes, Shmoop works very well as a self-tutoring resource. Shmoop helps students get inspired, organize thoughts, develop a point of view, write a great paper outline, and exchange ideas with other geniuses in the cosmos. Shmoop also helps them store juicy facts in their brain and gear up for tests and quizzes (although we’re not particularly fans of memorization because we think it drains the life out of these subjects).
Will other subjects such as math and science or foreign language be added to Shmoop’s arsenal?
Yes, we’ll add new tools and content frequently, and we’ll experiment with adding new subjects (we already have our lab coats and our test tubes in hand). We strongly encourage users to tell us what they need, and we’ll see if we can make that into a Shmoop subject. The more we hear from users, the more helpful the site will be. Readers can click our “Feedback” tab on the left side of our site to request new topics and vote for the ones you really want us to add.
