ShmoopTube

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Hi there, Utah.

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I’m Dave Siminoff and I’m the founder of Shmoop.

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It certainly seems that your state wants everyone taking the ACT to knock it out of the park…

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…because the Utah State Office of Education has purchased a Shmoop ACT/ PLAN license for

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every student, teacher and counselor in the state.

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From Logan to St. George, and everywhere in between.

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And believe us… when it comes to determining whether a state values its students’ needs…

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…the Provo is in the pudding. We’ll get into what we offer in terms of

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Test Prep in just a bit…

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…but in case you’ve never heard of Shmoop before, let’s start at the beginning…

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If you’re kind enough to listen to my droning voice, odds are good that you care a lot about

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education, your students and your community. It’s a fair question to ask – What is

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Shmoop? Well, technically “shmoop” is the verb

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my grandmother used when she missed her chocolate. I’d get a wink and she’d say, “Honey,

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shmoop me my chocolate, please.” The word means “move things forward a little

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bit,” and that’s what we aim to do. My wife and I started this company with the

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goal of doing things better. As our kids engaged in grammar school and

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beyond, we were stunned that learning tools had barely changed since we were in school.

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Same dull, rote forms of teaching. Serial, linear, uncreative exposition.

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And no love! No love of learning. No love of open-minded discussion.

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And there should be. We loved school. Yes – we were, and are, proud geeks.

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So Shmoop is a different approach to education. We want to remove the friction from learning.

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No $5 words, no pretense, no chest-pounding. We’re all about being relevant, real and

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approachable. More specifically, here at Shmoop we are learning

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guides, test preparations, life lanterns to light the way.

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We are guides to in-depth analysis of literature and poetry. Our guides are not short-cuts.

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They celebrate and encourage deeper thinking and student engagement.

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We are test prep exams covering everything from the ACT and SAT to nearly every AP on

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Earth.

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Utah has officially joined the Shmoop community by licensing our ACT and PLAN guides.

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Now that we’re all on the same team, we might even let you guys use the company car.

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MAYBE. Our online ACT guides include a unique student

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dashboard to track an individual’s progress, and to check items off their To-Do List…

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…a Topic Review section where a student can take all those little tidbits of information

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they’ve learned and make a permanent deposit into their memory bank…

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…a ton of Drill questions to keep them sharp…

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… 5 full length Practice Exams that immediately project to a student what their exam scores

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would… and could… be…

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…and the chance to earn Shmoints… which will make students the envy of all their friends,

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neighbors, and strangers on the street. We spend our days creating with a grimy group

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of hundreds of writers who hail from shmancy PhD programs from the finest long-haired institutions

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in the world. We have over a thousand guides on our site.

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We can’t show you everything, but let’s whet your appetite with a little taste.

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Our lit analyses explain why you should care about reading these stories and why they are

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relevant to today’s teens. Sometimes we get so excited that our write-ups

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are longer than the original story. We welcome students to Shmoop’s Biology

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101 – the virtual home for all things vegetable, animal and mineral.

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In Mythology, we have Facebooked the gods, leaked their tweets and email logs, and revealed

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whether they were jocks, valedictorians or beauty queens.

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You can have a rollicking good time on all these pages of Shmoop without spending a dime.

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But now let’s go to our premium service. What is Shmoop College Readiness?

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We want to get you, your students, your children ready for college.

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What we don’t believe in: snores and ridiculous prices.

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What we do believe: CSI can teach you something about the ACT.

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Batman and the Joker can explain integers better than most teachers.

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We are sure you have people telling you all day long why they are the greatest thing since

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sliced bread for your students. We believe we are right up there with this

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and other world-changing discoveries, because we’re fun, we’re funny-looking, we’re

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affordable to all. So that’s it. We hope you got the gist.

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We’re thrilled Utah has jumped aboard team Shmoop…

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…and we can’t wait to fill your brains with all sorts of amazing facts and figures.

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Need to create your Shmoop account?

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Contact your school administrators… they have the key to unlock the ACT/PLAN doors….

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Or you can contact us at:

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support@shmoop.com Ping us. We’re not shampooing our hair Saturday

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night. Yours in Shmoopiness – out.

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