Barbara Mallinson founded OBAMI, a social network and eLearning platform specifically designed for schools. Barbara is on a mission to bring the best eTools and social networking to teachers and learners. OBAMI enables the teachers to distribute resources, to allow the learners and teachers to comment and discuss the resources, as well as to provide assessments (to measure performance). Moreover, the platform allows for parents to join the “social network” so that teacher-learner-parent may communicate together. In a world where Facebook presents many challenges for schools, OBAMI is a very robust alternative. Based out of South Africa, OBAMI is rolling out in England (namely in Bolton, read press coverage) and is looking further afield.
To find Barbara Mallinson and OBAMI:
- Follow Barbara via Twitter @BarbsMall or @OBAMI
- The full site: OBAMI
- To contact Obami
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It's great to see that some schools are working to catch up on an area where the students are actually more in advance than their teachers at school: social networks. Indeed, as ironic as it is – social network are known for beeing time consuming at work – they have become more and more adapted for sharing school information and helping to make project groups.
It is thus a very good thing to see that schools are capable of using and promoting social networks that provide real protected, controlled and adapted environments for their students, in contrast to the universal ones, known for their data unsafety and general insecurity for children.
Thanks for your comment Amandine… I agree – its great to see schools finally embracing social media. With the right tools in hand, safety concerns no longer stand in the way of schools being able to provide their learners with an engaging and socially relevant education.
Many thanks Barbara for coming by. I wrote a piece recently how marketers could learn from Education (here: http://themyndset.com/2011/12/blended-marketing-w…