Before Smart.fm makes its official splash in the United States, they've decided to launch a Facebook application that acts as both a proof-of-concept to show what Smart.fm is capable of doing and a way to have some fun and test your knowledge of your Facebook friends.
Smart.fm aims to act as a full-fledged learning platform, wherein users can access the site, say "I want to learn about this topic" and be presented with tools, quizzes and world lists that test memory retention and understanding. There is a social element too, and users can both add their own information to existing courses, and share their learning schedules, remix content and ask and offer help.
The big focus for the last year has been on language learning -- because that's a really popular in Japan -- but Smart.fm wants to show off how it can be used to teach and aid in studying on any topic.
This is where Facebook comes in. The app sucks in structured data from your friends' profiles and creates a quiz about them. Where was your friend born? What is his favorite movie? What are his political leanings? What is NOT one of their favorite TV shows? If you get the highest score for a certain friend, you can "own" them -- until another friend of that user beats you either in time or in number of correct answers.
The big proof-of-concept with the Smart.fm Brainspeed Facebook application is to show off how FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) structured information can be used in learning platforms and to create learning lists and study plans. Replace the FOAF data with say, a list of terms and definitions on a certain topic -- or a listing of historical events -- and you can see how this could be really, really useful for learning and studying.
I talked with one of the Smart.fm leaders last November and was really impressed with their focused, analytical approach to learning -- combined with the company's goal of keeping users interacting with one another to aid in the learning process. Just looking at what the Facebook application does with its data set, you can see the possibilities for a real, social, evolving learning platform on a variety of topics.