Schools Go Into the 'Cloud' to Embrace the Popularity of Social Media SINGAPORE - The newest catchphrase in online education is social learning. Several start-up companies have begun offering cloud-based platforms that combine education and social media. Companies like Teamie, based in Singapore, provide software that lets teachers create, share and manage academic content, and also let students collaborate on assignments on platforms that are similar to the "walls" used on Facebook. Learning management systems, or L.M.S."s, have been around since the late 1990s, when Blackboard, a company in Washington D.C., introduced an online platform to help educators customize course management. Today, there are more than 60 companies providing such services worldwide. "Blackboard, Moodle and Sakai have a philosophy that hasn't changed much since Blackboard first invented the space in the "90s," said Hunter Horsley, the head of marketing and operations at Lore, referring to other learning-management systems. "They are typical L.M.S."s - software that's licensed, often for quite a bit of money, to school administrations and then provided to the faculty, primarily as a way to keep files and grades." Lore, which was originally known as Coursekit, began operations last December and changed its name to Lore in April. The company, based in New York, offers its platform for free. "Lore offers similar things for courses, like calendar, file, and grade management, but we don't think of ourselves as an L.M.S. We're building a platform for learning," Mr. Horsley said, pointing out that the company was marketing directly to students and teachers. In the United States, free social learning platforms like Edmodo and Schoology have been making waves in secondary schools. Edmodo, which was set up in 2008, has about six million users in about 70,000 U.S. high schools. Schoology, which was founded in 2009, is available in more than 18,000 schools internationally, though most of those schools are in the United States. Lore is already in use in 600 U.S. colleges and universities. Teamie, which was founded last year, introduced a pay-as-you-go social learning platform that costs on average 3 to 7 Singapore dollars, or as much as $5.50, per student each month. Ashwin Singh, a co-founder of Teamie, said that while the company also offered a free version, the subscription service could be customized to an institution's business processes and offers administrative features to better manage multiple classrooms. Teamie is trying to stand out by supporting multiple languages, including Mandarin, Japanese and Hindi, and by adding more games. The platform already has several classrooms running in Japanese, which indicates the potential in that market, Mr. Singh said. Another Teamie co-founder, Shivanu Shukla, said social networks were becoming the de facto mode of communication. Teamie is trying to make online learning social and fun to improve student engagement. It also rewards positive behavior with points and customized virtual badges for asking and answering questions, or submitting homework before it is due, he said. "In higher-end education, especially in the M.B.A. programs, you can be graded based on your class participation," Mr. Shukla said. On this platform, through the online mechanism, we can actually track your participation and see how well you're doing on a leader board. We're seeing that some of our customers are looking to use it as a proxy for class participation as well, if not a graded tool at least an indicator of who is participating more. Stamford Raffles College in Singapore recently chose Teamie as a learning platform. Colin Pereira, the chief executive of Stamford Raffles College, said the platform lets students on different campuses collaborate and share experiences with fellow students and faculty members. Mr. Pereira said that, while his school had been using Blackboard and it had evaluated Moodle, it settled on Teamie because of its "fresh approach" of using a wall similar to what is on Facebook and its ease of use. He said the platform saved time and effort because it automated some types of grading. Teamie says it has a strong analytical component that provides students and teachers with additional information beyond the student's score, like the class's high and low grades, as well as averages for each question and not just the entire test. Over the next 18 months, the company will be approaching schools in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It has also started testing the market in India, though Mr. Shukla said there were some difficulties because of the reach and quality of broadband access in some areas. "Beyond that, we are looking at Australia, and partners that could take Teamie to Korea and Japan, where we've already had very good interest," he said.