Shmoop Launches Online Courses for High School and a High Grade Fix for Breaking Bad Addicts in Time for Series Finale
Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) September 27, 2013 -- For students, back to school might mean the smell of sharpened pencils and lined paper, but Shmoop smells pure joy. The digital publisher of content and educational resources for over 7 million unique monthly site visitors and thousands of schools dished out new products and features just in time for students and teachers to feast as the school year gets tarts.
Shmoop’s Mirthfully Original Online Courses are Here
Over the summer, Shmoop’s greatest minds and 'chef de cuisines' gathered together to determine how to create the perfect recipe for online courses that work. They’ve created dozens of Common Core-aligned online courses inspired by the “best cuts” of Shmoop, including:
● Hilarious Original Content
Humor is the academic WD-40 Shmoop squirts on the tracks to make learning more fun, relevant, and accessible. So rest assured, all their content—from U.S. History to Modernist Literature to How to Write a Resumé—will have the same Shmoopy aftertaste as the literature guides and test prep resources everyone knows and loves.
● Common Core Compliant
Want to get published in The New Yorker? Vanity Fair? Well, Shmoop’s Common Core-aligned course on the Five-Paragraph Essay probably won't help. But it can promise to teach students to write stellar and nab that elusive A. Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere. Check out more Common Core-aligned courses here.
● Activities, Rubrics, & Teacher Notes
This one, Shmoop's cooked up just for teachers! Shmoop’s online courses have activities, grading rubrics, quizzes, and individual diagnostics so that teachers are equipped with everything necessary to make Jedi Masters out of their students.
● Adaptable, Accessible, Affordable
For a fraction of the price (and the weight) of a textbook, teachers and students can access high-quality, engaging content from anywhere in the world.
Go on and sample an online course from their fabulous menu of courses today!
Breaking Bad: A High-Grade Fix of SHMOOC
Step aside, Shakespeare. Breaking Bad is in town. This Emmy-winning show is cleaning up on all sides, winning the hearts of critics and audiences alike. Even the Guinness World Records took it on, granting the show the title of highest-rated TV series in history. This might explain why people have been nailed to their Netflix for months, burning through all five seasons like it was Heisenberg's Blue Sky. Don’t worry, Shmoop's been there—and they've written academic papers about it, to boot.
Just in time for the series finale, Shmoop is releasing a 15-lesson course analyzing the beans out of this show: everything from Breaking Bad as a classical tragedy; the undertones of Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and Kafka; its visual symbolism and clever filming; why people hate Skyler; and everything in between.
So whether viewers are just a casual fan or a theory-crafting addict, they can become the kingpin of Breaking Bad knowledge before saying goodbye to it all on AMC this Sunday.
Catch Up on What Happened Over the Summer:
In order to commemorate Back to School Shmoop style, Shmoop has created an infographic to catch students up on on the gossip they might have missed over the summer.
Literature Guides
Game of Thrones finally overthrew The Hunger Games trilogies as the most read literature summary over the summer. It’s not winter yet, but Katniss should have seen it coming.
Careers
As school ended and some students were out on their tuchus to find a job, they turned to Shmoop’s Career guide to start their journey to becoming adults. Of the top 10 states that visited the Shmoop Careers page the most, it was interesting to see that the Midwest and the South tended to concentrate on government and service-oriented jobs, while the coasts gravitated toward software engineer and, um, President.
College 101
In preparation for college applications, Shmoopers turned to College 101 to research scholarships that appealed to a variety of interests, including science, technology, community service, and... prom dress making. Haven’t started the college search yet? Not to worry! Check out Shmoop's revamped College 101 page today and take their new quiz to get started in the right direction for everything related to financial aid, applications, and the best college mascots.
Shmoop on All Screens
The results are in: iPhones win the popularity contest over Android phones as the device of choice for Shmoopers. Shmoop saw a near 200% increase in visits to their site via a mobile phone, and nearly 3 out of 4 of those visits were from an Apple produced phone.
Not to brag, but..
Huge shout out to Indio High School, who added a dose of Shmoop into their AP classrooms in 2011 and saw 5x more AP scholars in 2013 vs. the year they started with the online test prep company. Their teachers deserve most of the credit, as they also took the school from the chronically underperforming list to a Top High School Silver Award Winner from US News & Reports! Hip hip hooray!
For more trends and insights, check out the full infographic on Shmoop's blog.
Christina Park, Shmoop University, Inc., http://www.shmoop.com, +1 (415) 205-6306, [email protected]
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