-- Instant Access to Campus Services
-- Queued Chat for Tutoring and Office Hours
-- Automatic Population of Classmates and Courses
-- Application Sharing
-- Blended Audio and Video Conferencing
-- Instant School-Wide Notifications
-- Spanish Language Preference
-- Universal Accessibility
Spanish Language Option
Wimba Pronto 2.1 now supports Spanish, further expanding its reach and
meeting the needs of a growing population. Wimba Pronto instantly
recognizes the language of the user's operating system upon signing in and
automatically changes the user's interface. The enhanced version also
allows users to choose a preferred language regardless of operating system
preferences, providing increased flexibility.
Universal Accessibility
Wimba Pronto 2.1 exposes controls and assigns meaningful names and
descriptions to be read by leading screen readers such as JAWS (PC) and
VoiceOver (MAC). The enhancements also include an upgraded keyboard-based
navigation feature, allowing students who are not able to operate a mouse
the ability to use Wimba Pronto.
"Innovation at Wimba centers on developing new capabilities to meet the
diverse needs of students and educators in the 21st century classroom,"
said Yancy Oshita, Wimba's Executive Vice President of Global Sales and
Marketing. "The accessibility and Spanish language features in Wimba
Pronto 2.1 open the door for more students and educators to utilize instant
messaging as a platform for collaboration and learning."
According to the 2007 Community College Survey of Student Engagement,
almost half the students surveyed said they never engaged with faculty
members outside of class. The same survey found that only 15 percent of
students often or very often discussed ideas from their readings or classes
with instructors outside of class and just 8 percent said they often worked
with instructors on activities outside of class.
"Learning not only takes place in a lecture room but also in a hallway and
other places outside of the classroom," said Dena Faust, Assistant Director
of Distance Education/Instructional Design at Alvin Community College. "As
our roles change, so will the place where learning takes place. Most of my
learning took place in a library or classroom, but now as access to
information changes, so does access to people. Because of Web 2.0 tools we
create people-to-people access. This involves people working directly with
people. We'll make learning go from a passive to a passionate-type of
learning."
Wimba Pronto, powered exclusively by wind energy, is part of the Wimba
Collaboration Suite™, which offers a rich array of collaborative
applications that allow faculty to retain the highly personal and dynamic
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 can manage their course content
and create customized rooms from within their familiar CMS environment.
The Wimba Pronto 2.1 Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) and a
Spanish demo are available at www.wimba.com.
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
Contact Information: Media Contact(s) Kathleen Matthews Wimba, Inc. +1.646.861.5193 kmatthews@wimba.com Melissa Chotiner DBC PR+New Media +1.202.292.4572 melissa@dbcpr.com