I’m so excited about this free education app for South African matricus that launched today. I’ve written posts before on the great work many corporates are doing to try give our youth better access to technology and improve the standard of education in the country. Today, Gojimo is now available for free download in the Apple App Store and Google Play store.
Gojimo offers up free content that is specifically written for South African matrics. They’re able to select the subjects they’re studying and then can even go into specific subject topics. The app provides random quizzes, allows pupils to track their progress and also access old questions and answers to reinforce the work they’re absorbing. The big selling point for me is that the app works offline. So once you’ve downloaded the subject content you don’t need a data connection to work through it. Considering the data costs locally this is rather awesome.
When I first received the information about Gojimo my first reaction was – what’s the catch? I’m constantly told about free apps but when it comes to the download you end up paying through your nose for extra content to make it worthwhile.
I decided to ask George Burgess, the man behind Gojimo. Burgess is considered one of the world’s youngest successful entrepreneurs. He is 22 years old but 7 years ago set up and ran his own eBay shop where he made a pretty penny, he followed this up by founding EducationApps. He has worked with the likes of the BBC and Oxford University Press.
So how does the app make money?
According to Burgess, Gojimo secured investment funding from Index Ventures and JamJar investments in November 2013. This enabled them to develop and launch Gojimo by providing free content to build the user base. Shortly they are going to offer ebook study guides which students can buy but the current content including more than 160 000 quiz questions is free. The app also doesn’t take advertising, so no pesky pop ups.
I think a free education app for South African matrics is a tech tool that I can get behind. Will your kids be downloading Gojimo?