Wimba Claims Threefold Growth for Web 2.0 Tools in K-12

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/31/09

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Wimba, a developer of Web 2.0 utilities for education, said it has seen a threefold increase in the number of K-12 schools and districts that have deployed its software during the last year. Among the customers are both online-only schools--including Kentucky Virtual Schools, Louisiana Virtual School, Virtual Learning Academy in New Hampshire, and North Carolina Virtual Public School--and public school districts, including Albuquerque Public Schools, Baltimore City Public School System, Brevard Public Schools in Florida, Clear Creek Independent School District in Texas, School District of Clay County in Florida, and School District of Beloit in Wisconsin.

Wimba's Collaboration Suite provides interactive technologies such as voice, video, podcasting, instant messaging, application sharing, polling, and whiteboarding.

"With Wimba, we are able to fulfill two critical requirements: enhancing the relationship between teachers and students and developing an online community to engage students while preparing them for the workplace," said Chanin Rivenbark, CTO at North Carolina Virtual Public Schools. "The integrated platform and secure architecture lowers our total cost of ownership, alleviates security concerns at local school levels, and maximizes our agility because it does not require additional resources or staff to run any of Wimba's collaborative solutions."

The suite of utilities integrates with course management systems from Angel Learning, Blackboard, and Moodle to provide voice discussion boards, recorded messages and announcements; secure, academic-focused instant messaging; online workshops, meetings, and mentoring; and live and recorded lectures, and use of interactive whiteboards.

The company will be hosting a user conference starting on April 5, 2009 in Scottsdale, AZ.