Orlando, FL – (March 4, 2008) –Wimba, the education technology company that helps people teach people, is anything but AAK – asleep at the keyboard. Today, at Wimba’s first inaugural users’ conference - Wimba Connect 2008, Wimba unveiled the new Wimba Pronto™, the only academic-centric, instant messaging platform. Wimba Pronto enables students and instructors to spontaneously meet live online at any time, to discuss coursework and communicate through instant text, audio, or video connections. With 84% of undergraduate students using instant messaging on a daily basis, Wimba Pronto enables schools and colleges to bridge the gap between how students live and learn, by replicating informal learning settings in the online environment.
“Learning does not begin and end in the physical classroom; it carries over into the hallways, the library, the computer lab and common areas,” said Tommaso Trionfi, CEO of Wimba. “Wimba Pronto was developed specifically to harness the power of these informal learning settings for use in the online environment.”
Wimba Pronto’s Unique Academic-Centric Features
The only instant messenger designed for education to advance and promote learning, Wimba Pronto includes several unique features to specifically benefit students, teachers, and educational institutions including:
• Instant Access to Campus Services: Institutions can bring services online in real-time including the IT Department, Registrar, Financial Aid office, and Library to create a 21st-century campus for the 21st-century student.
• Queued Chat for Tutoring and Office Hours: Teachers can control the IM environment to enable a focused setting in which students “line up” for individualized help.
• Automatic Population of Classmates and Courses: Students’ contact lists are automatically populated with their courses and classmates to facilitate and expand collaboration.
• Application Sharing: Students can share any application on their desktop in real-time with their classmates and teachers.
• Blended Audio and Video Conferencing: Students and teachers can interact in a group setting using their preferred media; whether that be just audio or Wimba’s follow-the-speaker video.
Wimba Pronto in Pilot:
Ivy Tech Community College, the nation’s largest state-wide community college with single accreditation, piloted Wimba Pronto in December. Serving more than 111,000 students across 23 campuses, Ivy Tech regularly relies on technology to enhance connections among its diverse, dispersed student community.
“We launched Wimba Pronto with about 5,000 users,” said Jeffrey Ventrano, technical specialist at Ivy Tech. “We expected the students would love it, but so did the instructors. Many are using it for online office hours. We are in the process of rolling it out across our entire institution.”
The University of Missouri-St. Louis piloted Wimba Pronto in January and will roll it out across campus this spring.
“The mission of our university is to develop a community with our students, faculty and staff,” said Marcel Bechtoldt, system administrator for Technology Services at UM-St. Louis. “Wimba Pronto has the potential to have a big impact on campus community allowing us to communicate online, to share our academic interest and cultural diversity.”
Wimba Pronto seamlessly integrates with the Blackboard Enterprise Learning System and Moodle. Conference attendees will be able to experience a hands-on demonstration of the new Pronto in the exhibit hall at Wimba Connect 2008. For more information on Wimba Pronto, please visit http://www.wimba.com/products/wimbapronto/