Utah Education Network Selects Wimba to Enhance Teaching and Learning Across Statewide K-20 Consortium


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - January 9, 2008) - Wimba, the education technology company that helps people teach people, today announced that the Utah Education Network (UEN) has selected the Wimba Collaboration Suite™, the education industry's leading multi-modal solution for virtual and blended learning. UEN will deploy Wimba's comprehensive solution across its statewide network of higher education and K-12 institutions to enhance student engagement, collaboration and increase learning outcomes.

UEN is a consortium of public education partners including the Utah System of Higher Education, the Utah State Office of Education, local school districts and the Utah Electronic High School and the state's Library system. Serving more than 750,000 students, UEN provides Internet and network connectivity to every public school and college and university across the state. After careful review of several technology offerings, UEN selected the Wimba Collaboration Suite for its wide array of rich interactive tools. Educators across Utah's 10 public colleges and universities and 41 K-12 school districts will have access to the full suite to enhance student learning opportunities, expand professional development and facilitate online, interactive meetings for all its members.

"We began our search for a web conferencing solution but realized we would get much more value with a comprehensive solution that could support the diverse needs of members across our network," said Cory Stokes, Enterprise Learning Services Manager for Utah Education Network. "The Wimba Collaboration Suite will enable our community of users to connect and collaborate in so many different ways, it seems likely that we will discover new uses for the technology as we become more familiar with all of the capabilities."

The Wimba Collaboration Suite facilitates the use of online video, voice, instant messaging, content authoring, application sharing and white boarding. The Wimba Collaboration Suite works seamlessly within existing online courses enabling convenient single sign-on for instructors and students who can also access all of the tools directly in their online course environments. The Wimba Collaboration Suite integrates with the most widely used course management systems including the Angel, Blackboard and Moodle platforms.

"Our relationship with the Utah Education Network demonstrates the power of Wimba to engage teachers and students across the K-20 spectrum to support life-long learning," said Tommaso Trionfi, CEO of Wimba. "The Wimba Collaboration Suite is much more than a virtual classroom, it is a comprehensive and collaborative learning environment. We are proud to be selected as UEN's choice for their e-Learning needs."

About Wimba

Wimba is a company focused solely on education and dedicated to the principle that people learn more when they are drawn closer together. Our collaborative software applications for the online education market enable institutions to bridge technology and pedagogy by supplementing course management systems with many of the proven disciplines of in-person learning environments. Wimba's intuitive solutions enable educators 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 course content, and more. Instructors can also use Wimba solutions to convert Microsoft Word documents into accessible course content and to create and administer tests, quizzes, and exams. Our focus on education and collaboration with educators fuels our product development.

Wimba. People Teach People. www.wimba.com

Contact Information: Wimba PR Contact: Melissa Chotiner DBC Public Relations +1.202.292.4572 Melissa@dbcpr.com