South African school-orientated social networking site Obami.com has added a new application to its offering that provides a portal for the setting, submission and assessment of school assignments.
Obami is a social networking site for local schools that helps parents, teachers and pupils keep up with everything that is happening at their school from a single place. The site was developed as an e-learning, collaboration and communication platform for use within and between both primary and secondary schools, says the social network.
Obami explains that the new feature, which is called “My Assignments”, allows teachers to obtain, generate and share worksheets, tests, revision papers, exams and questionnaires electronically. It also allows students to complete and submit their assignments through the same platform.
Founder of the social network Barbara Mallinson says this extends Obami's reach into the realm of e-learning.
Tracking homework
The new application will be helpful with homework, as well as with tests and exam assessments, according to Mallinson.
She explains that, depending on assignment settings selected by the teacher, learners have the ability to save work they have begun, or complete and submit their work in one session.
“Further making life easier for teachers, the feature's assessment functionality can be enabled so that auto-marking of assignments can take place. This not only saves teachers' time, but also affords them an immediate indication of a learner's progress through course materials.”
Mallinson says “My Assignments” works with the other major applications within Obami. One example is that once a teacher has set an assignment, it is automatically added to the learner's list of “Due Assignments”, which appears on their home page.
“This means that 'My Assignments' also functions like a virtual homework diary, allowing parents and learners alike to track homework tasks, and overall performance results too. Parents will also appreciate that 'My Assignments' now provides them with a quick report of their child's performance at school and on-demand access to marks and comments made by teachers.“
She says the application allows for planning of upcoming tests, assignments and examinations, making the workflow more manageable for learners, teachers and parents.
Detecting plagiarism
“Teachers, learners and their parents can rest assured there are more compelling features in the pipeline,” says Mallinson.
She also says an application, with the ability to detect plagiarism among electronically submitted assignments, is something that will be added to Obami in the future.
Offered free to schools, the social networking site is also accessible via its mobile platform (www.obami.mobi), says the site.
Mallinson says 12 schools are currently using Obami and 12 more are in the process of integrating the system.
“A lot of the students have started using Obami in a social capacity on top of it being an e-learning and school communications tool. We are not trying to replace current social networks that they may already be using, as they do provide a valuable service to kids, but if students do use Obami for social reasons too, it's a bonus. At least we know they are doing so in a safe environment.”
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