As K-12 schools face encounter and increasing number of challenges in our growing knowledge economy, many leverage learning technologies to improve student outcomes, teacher development, student engagement and attendance. With this in mind, Blackboard has teamed with Wimba, a provider of online collaboration tools, to bring the Wimba Collaboration Suite Express to K-12 schools and districts using the Blackboard Learning System™. The collaboration tools will be delivered to current and new Backboard Learning System (including Basic Edition) clients in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Wimba Classroom provides a live virtual classroom environment for distance learning, professional development that includes features like whiteboarding and interactive polling. Blackboard will distribute the Wimba Collaboration Suite Express, which includes limited versions of Wimba Classroom™, Wimba Voice™, and Wimba Pronto™ to our K-12 clients.

The new partnership provides a unique benefit to members of the Blackboard K-12 community. Districts and independent, private and virtual schools can take advantage of Wimba’s powerful capabilities to:

• Engage auditory learners through voice discussion boards and voice authoring
• Strengthen class community through education-centric instant messaging
• Facilitate teacher development through online workshops, meetings and mentoring

“Today's teachers and administrators seek new ways to deliver a more engaging learning experience to their students,” says Jessie Woolley-Wilson, President of K-12 at Blackboard. “Increasingly, the new school environment is empowered by technologies that can be seamlessly integrated into the learning experience at the point of instruction. These technologies can help close the gap between how students live and how they learn. Blackboard and Wimba’s alliance will provide a collaborative learning environment for a more engaging, individualized educational process that empowers 21st century learning communities.”

Blackboard and Wimba plan to launch the initial distribution of Wimba Collaboration Suite Express to Blackboard K-12 clients in early 2008. For more information about this new offering, please e-mail wimbaexpress@wimba.com.