New York, NY – (March 21, 2006) – Horizon Wimba announced today that blendedschools.net has selected its Live Classroom and Voice Tools collaboration software so that K-12 students throughout Pennsylvania can participate in online courses that their face-to-face schools and districts do not currently offer. Blendedschools.net currently has 103 member districts and offers 66 K-12 online courses including core academic, world language, advanced placement, and elective courses.
Several Pennsylvania school districts have already created online tutoring hotlines via Horizon Wimba’s Live Classroom so that students can enter a virtual room and ask tutors questions or receive direct instruction using Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and chat. Teachers have also recorded their live classes so students have the ability to view a recorded class as many times as they like or need.
Live Classroom and Voice Tools provide teachers with tools that enable them to create rich verbal, social, and synchronous environments that are extremely important to the success of online K-12 students. It is the lively, interactive nature of Horizon Wimba’s VoIP, chat, application sharing, polling, and quizzing which makes it such a terrific fit for K-12.
“Servicing K-12, it is important to have audio integrated into online content and have the ability for students to response verbally for all courses,” said Mark Gensimore, Project Manager for blendedschools.net. “In addition, even though our courses are asynchronous it is extremely important to provide a synchronous environment for teachers to provide direct instruction and tutoring. It is the social interaction and environment that the Voice Tools and Live Classroom allow teachers to create.”
Further, all of the Horizon Wimba tools are used within blendedschool.net’s Blackboard environment. Horizon Wimba’s products are so thoroughly integrated with Blackboard that they can be seamlessly accessed and configured by faculty and students without ever leaving their Blackboard courses.
Blendedschools.net is a non-profit organization in central Pennsylvania dedicated to optimizing technology to enhance student learning by delivering a growing list of services to its member school districts and their students.