Serendipity35

Socrates on an excellent adventure with Bill & Ted

OK, dear reader, what's your take on this -

Socrato (a play on Socrates - the Socratic method dude) is a Massachusetts-based company that is offering test preparation materials online. They started by uploading sample questions for Massachusetts' own state tests. For the MCAS, that's 5 years worth of prior test questions and answers organized by grade year (6, 7, & 8 ) in mathematics, English, science, technology/engineering, and history and social science. In all, 1000+ MCAS questions available from 27 previous tests.

Browse through their categories and you'll also find tests for U.S. Citizenship, the SAT and GRE.

Let's assume for now that all that test material is public information and copyright-free for them to post. Then, what caught my interest is that they added some crowdsourcing. To build the site content, they have added a way to upload user-generated content. Teachers and tutors can upload their own materials for all to see and use.

Questions from the audience? I have some, and the site has some answers.

Is this a free-forever site or is there a business model behind this?

"Socrato’s intuitive patent pending technology is available for free through 2008 for all 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. Why we are letting people use the technology for free? Because we are still in the early phases of developing Socrato as a business, but we did not want the data and systems now in place to go to waste. We thought it would be helpful to students preparing for the tests this year. Will Socrato charge for use of these on-line preparation tests in the future? We are still studying the business model best suited for our technology and and services, so it’s difficult to say."

The tests offered are basically multiple choice, fill in the blank, and true/false questions. Users who want to add tests can upload (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) files and complimentary materials. If a teacher wanted to distribute test prep materials to a particular class, they can also set up groups for that purpose.

Although Socrato wasn't designed to actually administer tests, that seems to be a feature for the future. But students can take the practice tests on the site and it will grade them and make suggestions for improvement. According to the site: "The service is smart enough to tell which subjects students did well on, and in the next release it will even be able to track how students deliberate on questions by analyzing which answers they cross off first."

This blog review is superficial. I haven't dug very deep into their tests and I haven't attempted to upload content. My concern is what happens to the site down the road. My question to you is whether you see such a site as an educational resource or not?