MentorMob Lets Instructors Compile Learning Playlists

A new Web 2.0 service facilitates compilation of "learning playlists" containing links to articles and videos that educators can make available to their students and others. MentorMob, from a company by the same name, is a free Web site that provides a repository for aggregating and organizing online educational resources. Once material is added, the viewer, such as a student, can work through the playlist in "steps."

Once a user registers for the site, he or she can develop a new playlist, categorize it by audience (such as "academia & school"), tag it, and then start adding links to the material along with descriptions. For example, a learning playlist about, Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank includes eight steps, providing a timeline of the major events in her family's life that caused them to go into hiding.

 
MentorMob allows users to compile and collaboratively edit playlists with links, videos, and timelines.
 

Playlists can be made public or private, and the creator can choose to "lock" the playlist or make it public in order to allow others to modify it. Once it's saved, the creator and others can share it through Facebook, Twitter, email, a Web site, or other means.

Although MentorMob can be used by instructors in formal education settings, it can deliver less formal online instruction too. Company founders Kris Chinosorn and Vince Leung said they hope that the collaborative nature of the platform will enable the material to continually grow and improve--"similar to Wikipedia."

"The Internet is the first place most people turn to find information and learn virtually anything, but there's no sense of organization--you have to stumble through, often running into dead ends along the way," said Chinosorn. "At MentorMob, our community members sort through all the content, choose the best snippets and lace them together into a step-by-step course. With MentorMob, you spend more time learning and less time searching."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • shattered digital cloud with red warning alert icons

    CSA's Top Cloud Threats: Identity, AI

    Cloud Security Alliance's 2026 Top Threats report ranks identity first while adding two AI-related risks to its list of 11 leading cloud security concerns.

  • Data cybersecurity warning alert

    Flashpoint Patents Ransomware Risk Model, Tying Vulnerabilites to Likelihood of Attack

    Cybersecurity company Flashpoint recently announced it has received U.S. Patent No. 12,705,360 for its Ransomware Risk model, a methodology designed to help security teams determine which newly disclosed vulnerabilities more closely resemble those historically used in ransomware attacks.

  • young man hand working on a laptop, bokeh blurred at night

    Redesigned Copilot Will Build Apps and Work on Its Own

    Microsoft recently announced that it's redesigning Copilot, the company's all-encompassing AI assistant, so users can hand off complex tasks, build tools by describing what they need and assign work to an agent that keeps going after they log off.

  • A glowing digital brain with neural connections and light trails

    AI Giants Warn It May Be Time to Slow Down

    For years, leaders in the artificial intelligence industry have warned that increasingly capable AI systems could eventually become dangerous, all the while continuing to race to build them. Now, their sentiments have changed.