don smithmier

Don Smithmier is the founder and CEO of Sophia, which was created on the premise that there are millions of great ideas, methods, lessons and people who can contribute to society’s goal of spreading knowledge and making education better and more effective. His goal is to use innovation to bring education and technology together in an impactful way for students, teachers, parents, tutors and more.

Previously, Don was an early‐stage employee and ultimately Vice President at Capella University (NSDQ: CPLA), the first fully-online, accredited university. During his 14 years at Capella, Don held a succession of Marketing, Technology and Business leadership roles and was recognized as a pioneer in online advertising and the innovative use of web technologies. Don is a winner of the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” and founder of Matter Worldwide (www.matterworldwide.com), the parent company of three successful start‐ups including GoKart Labs, the digital innovation company that incubated and built Sophia. Don earned his MBA with honors from the University of Minnesota and his BA from the University of Wisconsin.

From the website:  "Sophia enables innovation by connecting learners, teachers, experts and parents. We provide an academic community where everyone has access to learning that surrounds and supports the traditional classroom. We encourage variety and creativity in teaching so that everyone can learn in a way that makes sense to them.

"Sophia is a social teaching and learning platform that taps the teacher in all of us and enhances the learning process by providing access to a wealth of knowledge, help, instruction, standards-aligned content, and expertise available to learners everywhere.

"We want to harness technology for the betterment of the educational system as a whole. We can all help others learn. And Sophia’s mission is to be a catalyst in this educational movement."




Tom Krawczewicz (@tkraz): So learners will get recommendations of content from teachers they have "favorited?"


http://www.sophia.org
creating learning packet


model of site  - at core level - is free


Maria Droujkova: WikiEducator and UNESCO
OER


sweet spot for sophia, grades 11-14, general courses, math science english, it's for college readiness and success


sophia is about tagging and mapping - for future use
no interactive chat at this time

see themselves as being place for courses, tutors, assessments, credentials, etc.
much like amazon or ebay, - take a tax on it for the environment


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