We are in the midst of a term break from the regular school activities, but that has not stopped some of my colleagues from consulting with each and collaborating on school based matters (and a few non-school based ones as well). After a gentle reminder of the potential of Yammer by @HamishCurry from The State Library of Victoria’s education team, we have been giving it a go. In the week since we began experimenting, we have had shared discussions, highlighted websites and resources we might use in the upcoming term, encouraged each other and generally got to see the potential of this tool.  This is quite remarkable seeing we are supposed to be on holiday, but just proves that teachers never really shut off.

Yammer is a microblogging or activity stream application which allows a particular community to communicate in a manner very similar to Twitter. It can be accessed via web browser, desktop client, or smart phone. The main difference between Twitter and Yammer is that Yammer is for internal use within an organisation.
Yammer is not a replacement for regular meetings, email, or face-to-face conversation—it is simply another communications tool which extends staff experience with new technologies and complements existing forms of communication.
National Library of Australia – Gateways

I am yet to decide if I think it will have a future in our small school circumstance, but I do like some features:

• the similarity to Facebook and the common skills
• the simplicity – it is not over the top with gadgets etc
• the ability to connect it with Twitter by using the #yam hashtag
• the private nature – only people sharing a common url email can see your network
• the ability to create small networks within the system