Contact Information: Media Contact(s) Kathleen Matthews Wimba +1.646.861.5193 kmatthews@wimba.com Melissa Chotiner DBC PR+New Media +1.202.292.4572 melissa@dbcpr.com
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - July 29, 2008) - Under the category, "Who Knew?" comes Wimba's
Modern Marvels. Wimba® Inc., the education technology company that helps
people teach people, today announced its inaugural list of the Top 10
Unique Online Courses, which utilize Wimba's collaborative solutions.
10.) Hedge Your Bets with Casino Management: Students at The University of
Southern Mississippi hit the jackpot when they enrolled in a three credit
online Casino Resort Management course. The course provides students live
online access via Wimba Classroom™ to professional casino managers
including Michael Cray, Director of Table Games at the Isle of Capri
Casino, who guest lectures from the casino's boardroom.
9.) COMMCERT -- Dalhousie's own "Canadian Idol": Today's MySpace generation
of students are all about multi-media and 'putting it out there.' That's
why students flocked to professor Phil O'Hara's extra credit course in
which they were asked to submit online presentations a la "American Idol"
-- presenting everything from poetry readings to piano recitals. Unprepared
for the 200 students who signed up, O'Hara also assigned some students to
the roles of Simon, Paula and Randy to judge performances and used the
polling feature in Wimba Classroom for student to cast their votes. Some
notable performances include "The Witches" from "Macbeth," "Who's on First,
What's on Second," a bagpipe performance, and a display of bugs.
8.) Arctic Wildlife in Singapore: Students at the Singapore American School
studying Antarctic animals made life-size replicas of these animals, set up
their classroom like a museum, and then created their own podcasts with the
Podcasting feature of Wimba Voice™ to describe their displays. Their
parents came in later that evening and listened to their children's
podcasts as they walked through the exhibits.
7.) Take A Minute for English: Reese M. Heitner teaches English as a Second
Language (ESL) at Drexel University, preparing his students -- from across
the globe -- for the TOEFL exam, an international test which verifies a
student's proficiency in English speaking, reading, writing, and listening
skills. The test requires students to spontaneously produce speech samples
in response to a series of computer-prompted questions. By using Wimba
Voice, Heitner's students are able to simulate the TOEFL test environment,
posting their speech samples within the pre-defined one-minute window
before the built-in timer runs out! It's a one-of-a-kind way to allow
students to maximize their test preparation.
6.) Kindergarten -- ALL Day Long: Kindergarten students in the Rose Tree
Media School District outside of Philadelphia no longer enjoy the luxury of
a half-day. Now, thanks to Wimba Classroom and Wimba Voice, they extend
their half-day program with a thematic online course as they learn 21st
century technology skills. Students play games and engage in other
learning activities to augment literacy, numeracy, technology, and science
standards. Sorry kids, naptime not allowed.
5.) Photography Around the World -- With photography students based in
England, the United States, Turkey, Mozambique, Greece, Sweden and Italy,
University of the Arts London, London College of Communication -- Europe's
largest education centre for design, communication, and the arts -- uses
Wimba Classroom to provide a collaborative and interactive Web 2.0 feel to
its online photography courses. Though students can't take pictures of
their classmates on the other side of the globe, they can share
photographic techniques and annotate each other's pictures in real-time.
4.) PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) --
Taking K-12 Students Into the Arctic Virtually: This program, run by the
Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) and funded by the National
Science Foundation, allows K-12 teachers to participate in polar research
as a pathway to improving science education. During their participation in
the program, PolarTREC teachers and researchers use the real-time chat and
audio features in Wimba Classroom to show slides and communicate with
classrooms and the public across the globe to present their research
directly from the Arctic and Antarctica during "Live from International
Polar Year (IPY)!" events.
3.) Learning English by Watching "Friends" and "Home Alone": Megan Ritchie,
an instructor in the English Languages Program at the University of
Pennsylvania, puts TV and movie clips from YouTube into the Wimba Voice
presentation tool for her Vocabulary Development class. In one lesson, her
non-native English speaking students watch an airport scene from "Friends,"
in order to hear English travel terms like, delay, bump up, and first
class. In another lesson, students watch a clip from the movie "Home
Alone," where the family races through an airport. It gives her students a
fun and practical way to practice speaking and listening to English.
2.) The Genographic Project -- a Journey Through Humankind: This two-credit
course offered by Southern State Community College in Ohio is the only one
of its kind and is based on an unprecedented five-year research project
being conducted by National Geographic. It takes students on a landmark
study of the human journey -- where we came from and how we got to where we
live today -- through genetic and DNA analysis. A highlight of the course
is an online connection to Dr. Spencer Wells, scientist, geneticist, author
and documentary filmmaker, who is project director for the Genographic
Project at National Geographic. You can find more information about the
Genographic Project at www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic.
1.) History, Education and Guidance of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and
Introduction to Instructional Methods for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing:
These award-winning online courses, offered by Bloomsburg University of
Pennsylvania, feature a sign-language interpreter and closed-caption text
to accompany slide presentations, as well as audio of lectures for hearing
students. These courses are prerequisites to the only graduate program in
Pennsylvania -- and 70 in the nation -- for training teachers of the deaf.
These online courses broaden access to students interested in this field.
"As online courses become a mainstream part of K-12 and higher education
offerings, faculty are recognizing that the sky is really the limit when it
comes to subject matter," said Yancy Oshita, Chief Marketing Office and SVP
of Wimba. "Technology in education is really as transparent as it is in so
many other aspects of how people live -- it is merely the vehicle to
provide greater flexibility and options for everything from shopping and
making travel arrangements, to teaching, communicating, and learning."
The Wimba Collaboration Suite™ offers a rich array of collaborative
tools that allow faculty to retain the highly personal and lively nature of
traditional classroom instruction. Wimba solutions integrate seamlessly
within existing university course management systems/virtual learning
environments (CMS/VLE) such as ANGEL® Learning, Blackboard® and Moodle.
With this combination, Wimba offers institutions the flexibility they need
so that instructors never need a new username or password, and never have
to leave their familiar online course environments
About Wimba
Wimba®, Inc. is a leading provider of collaborative learning software
applications and services to the education industry. Our collaborative
software applications for the online and blended education market enable
institutions to bridge technology and pedagogy by supplementing learning
management systems with many of the proven disciplines of in-person
learning environments. Wimba's intuitive solutions enable teachers and
students to quickly and easily teach and learn live online, engage in live
chat and instant message exchanges, benefit from oral content being added
to text-based content, and more. Teachers can also use Wimba solutions to
easily convert Microsoft Word documents into online content and to create
and administer tests, quizzes, and exams. Our focus on education and
collaboration with educators fuels our product development. For more
information, please visit www.wimba.com or send an email to info@wimba.com.
Wimba. People Teach People. www.wimba.com