George Burgess came up with the idea for exam preparation apps while studying for his A Level exams. Media accounts have made light of his being caught emailing a freelance app developer by his Geography teacher, who resultantly became his first business adviser. Having established EducationApps Ltd. the EducationApps range grew to over a hundred subject-specific apps. The apps quickly took off and Burgess produced nine BBC Bitesize apps. He continued to run the company while studying at Stanford Universityin America. In 2014 venture capital firmIndex Ventures and JamJar Investments, a fund set up by the founders of Innocent smoothies, announced they invested over $1 million in Burgess’ company, which was rebranded as Gojimo and grouped into a single platform solution and launched at the 2014 BETT show. Over the course of 2014 the Gojimo team began to develop in-house content, the teacher portal and launched on Android and the web in 2015. The team now has 14 members of staff. Gojimo was also a finalist of the Best App Category of BETT 2015. In March 2017, Gojimo was acquired by Telegraph Media Group.
Functionality
The in-app store is used to locate quizzes and study guides: users browse by subject or qualification. Study guides can be searched or navigated by topic. Within each set of questions. users can take a random quiz or choose a specific topic on which to focus. Quizzes consist of multiple choice questions with four possible answers. After answering each question the user is given in-depth explanations of the answer and links to further reading. They can also track their improvement over time in the progress review section.
Content
The app currently offers content for various subjects for UK exams: 11+ Common Entrance, 13+ Common Entrance, GCSE and A-Level; US Exams: SAT, ACT and AP; and international undergraduate and IGCSE qualifications. The subjects offered vary between qualifications but include Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography, History, Maths, Law, Politics, Religious Studies, English, Latin, Spanish, German, Psychology and Design Technology. In addition to content which is generated by in-house writers and fact-checked by teachers, external publishers such as McGraw-Hill Education and Oxford University Press have created premium content for the app. There are currently 60,000 questions available across the different qualifications.
Aims
Gojimo aims to be the world's leading exam preparation application and to take a significant role in the transformation of education away from textbooks and towards digital sources. George Burgess has participated in numerous public functions to help to spread this idea, such as when he was selected to take part in the UK's Great Tech Expedition to America, initiated by London mayor Boris Johnson
