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                <p>Buried within platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia lies valuable educational content that can reinforce classroom lessons, help self-motivated learners teach themselves new concepts, and upend the way that the world looks at education. But it's hard to separate this content from the cat videos, ads and uninformed contributions that share the same platforms.</p>
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Social learning startup <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/mashable/tc_mashable/storytext/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education/40586502/SIG=10nbbqin4/*http://www.sophia.org" target="_blank">Sophia</a>, which launched its public beta Monday, aims to solve this problem by focusing exclusively on crowdsourced educational material and encouraging users to help sort the academically sound, engaging lessons from the sub-par lessons.</p>
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Anybody can compile a "lesson packet" on Sophia using slideshows, videos, audio clips and text that they either upload or pull in from sources like YouTube. About 200 private beta users have already covered lessons ranging from <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/mashable/tc_mashable/storytext/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education/40586502/SIG=128s4bj72/*http://www.sophia.org/packets/cinematography-intro-camera-angles-shots" target="_blank">Camera Angles &amp; Shots</a> to <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/mashable/tc_mashable/storytext/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education/40586502/SIG=128c1akqk/*http://www.sophia.org/packets/coordinate-geometry-of-quadrilaterals--2" target="_blank">Coordinate Geometry of Quadrilaterals</a>.</p>
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The idea is to make it easy for students to find reliable knowledge on any topic quickly and efficiently. In the search options, for instance, students can even select specific text books to find corresponding packets. If students still don't understand something after viewing a lesson, they can post a question to a Q&amp;A board attached to each packet.</p>
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CEO Don Smithmier says one of the most common uses of the platform since the private beta that launched in November has been to curate the best content about a given concept from other social media platforms like YouTube. </p>
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"There's a ton of good information on the web, but it's hard to find," he says. "And part of it is that if you don't already know what you're doing, it's hard to evaluate the good from the bad."</p>
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After a packet is submitted, Sophia has multiple ways to gauge its quality. When users sign up for the site, they have an option to identify themselves as subject experts, if they hold a degree in that field or teach courses on it. Three such experts need to certify a lesson as "academically sound" before it is labeled as such. </p>
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There is also a five-star user rating system similar to the seller ratings at Amazon.com, and lesson creators have lifetime "Sophia ratings" that gauge how successfully they've contributed to the community. Other rewards for providing quality content include earning followers via a Twitter-like feature and badges.</p>
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Sophia.org is free, and the company is committed to barring advertising, as well as the content manipulations that come with it, from the site. But the project isn't purely a labor of love -- eventually the company will sell a white-label version of the product to schools and universities that want their own private, white-label versions of the product. For now, the project is backed by an investment from online education company <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/mashable/tc_mashable/storytext/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education/40586502/SIG=11221cibj/*http://www.capellaeducation.com/" target="_blank">Capella</a>. </p>
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<em>Image courtesy of <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/mashable/tc_mashable/storytext/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education/40586502/SIG=11ee52d7r/*http://www.istockphoto.com/mashableoffer.php">iStockphoto</a>, <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/mashable/tc_mashable/storytext/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education/40586502/SIG=11l3f5p2d/*http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=3439660">enviromantic</a></em> </p>
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            </p></div></div><p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a class="rssreadon" rel="external" title="New Platform Uses Social Features To Improve Online Education   (Mashable)" href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/education/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20110309/tc_mashable/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education" target="_blank">http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/education/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20110309/tc_mashable/new_platform_uses_social_features_to_improve_online_education</a></p>