I found out about Socrates from Brian Rosenberg, CEO of PIE’s partner TRG Consultants. After twenty years leading large software implementations in the healthcare industry he had decided to focus his efforts in a new venture to help educate kids. Having young children and wanting to improve the education of his children and others, Brian teamed up with some other smart folks including a data science and mathematics expert, Dr. Ralph Thomas, to create Socrates (www.withsocrates.com).
Utilizing grant funding from the National Science Foundation, Brian’s team developed a program that kids want to use and is proven to work. Socrates started in one school in one classroom in the Las Vegas area in April of 2018. It’s now spreading like wildfire and is in over 4 dozen schools and recently launched in Mexico. They expect to be in thousands of schools this fall.
So what makes Socrates so great? Socrates has product lines for schools, homeschoolers, libraries, and just to enhance skills at home. Socrates is a user-friendly, cloud based learning solution that makes managing your child’s learning easy while also providing a learning environment that kids want to “play” in. That’s right – I said “play”. Socrates utilizes some gamification in order to make learning FUN! Students are rewarded for answering more questions and answering more questions correctly by things like: improvements to their avatar, virtual coins that they can trade for new privileges, etc.
The bottom line is – Socrates is showing a correlation to higher test scores because the kids want to play and consequently learn. Kids often come home from school and play on Socrates after school voluntarily! In its first full school year, kids who used Socrates had test scores 18-34% higher then kids in the same school who did not use Socrates.
Socrates currently has offerings in English, Math and Science. It is coming out with History and languages and will cover a wide range of topics in the future! Socrates also has plans to help teach health habits to kids in the future including Nutrition, exercise, and chronic condition management.
Schools across the country have already adopted e-learning platforms but those platforms have limitations and are not “fun”. Some are not cloud hosted and some lack the ability to personalize the learning experience. Socrates has the ability to follow your student from K-12 and identify strengths and weaknesses which allows the teacher and parent complete visibility into areas that need more focus. Some of us learn differently – some of us are good at math, some of us are good at English, etc. Socrates informs the instructor of areas in which a student is at par, below par, above par, etc. This allows the opportunity for corrective action earlier and corresponds to helping students gain a better understanding of the areas that they find difficult.
Socrates is AWESOME! Partners In Energy LLC is an authorized distributor of the Socrates program and we look forward to helping Brian expand his market penetration!
Learn more about Socrates by visiting their website at www.withsocrates.comor email Brian at brian@withsocrates.com.