Foundation for California Community Colleges Selects Wimba to Promote Use of Instructional Technology System-Wide

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - May 27, 2008) - Wimba, the education technology company that helps people teach people, announced today that the Foundation for California Community Colleges has signed an agreement to provide Wimba Voice™ to the California Community Colleges. The agreement facilitates easy access to Wimba Voice by all 109 colleges in the system.

The California Community College system is the largest higher education system in the nation. The Foundation is a unique nonprofit organization that supports the system by managing system-wide purchasing contracts, centralized technology solutions, programs, and grants.

"Working with the colleges the Foundation identifies current technology solutions and streamlines the process so that faculty and students have access to the tools they need to enhance teaching and learning," said Joseph Quintana, director of purchasing programs at the Foundation. "We are pleased to add Wimba as an approved vendor partner and expect Wimba Voice will be of great value to our campuses."

The agreement between Wimba and the Foundation was finalized in November 2007; nine colleges have already licensed Wimba Voice, including the City College of San Francisco.

Carol Reitan, a French instructor at the college uses Wimba Voice for online language instruction.

"We began using Wimba Voice last spring. It is extremely easy to use and beneficial for our online language classes," said Reitan. "In less than a year, Wimba Voice is a central part of our French, Italian, Spanish and Mandarin online language courses and we are looking forward to expanding our use, with the Wimba podcasting tool."

In addition to the California Community College system, several other academic systems have sealed agreements with Wimba since the beginning of 2008, including the Utah Education Network, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and Kentucky Community and Technical College System, providing enhanced education opportunities to a combined 41 K-12 and 37 higher education institutions.

"Serving 2.6 million students, the California Community College system is unparalleled in its reach and the powerful role it plays in higher education," said Tommaso Trionfi, CEO of Wimba. "We are pleased to have an opportunity to help further educational opportunities through this relationship."

Wimba Voice is part of the Wimba Collaboration Suite™ which facilitates the use of online video, voice, instant messaging, content authoring, application sharing and white boarding. The Wimba Collaboration Suite works seamlessly within existing online courses enabling convenient single sign-on for instructors and students who can also access all of the tools directly in their online course environments. The Wimba Collaboration Suite integrates with the most widely used course management systems including the Angel, Blackboard and Moodle platforms.

About Wimba

Wimba 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 course management systems with many of the proven disciplines of in-person learning environments. Wimba's intuitive solutions enable educators 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 course content, and more. Instructors 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.

About the Foundation for California Community Colleges

The Foundation for California Community Colleges is the official auxiliary to the California Community Colleges' Board of Governors, Chancellor, and System Office. The Foundation's mission is to benefit, support, and enhance the missions of the California Community College system, the largest higher education system in the nation. Incorporated in 1998, the Foundation works with the Community Colleges and partner organizations to manage donations, grants, programs, and services that drive excellence in education while saving millions of dollars for colleges each year. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exmpt nonprofit corporation and receives no direct state or public support. For more information, visit www.foundationccc.org.

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Contact Information: Wimba PR Contact: Melissa Chotiner DBC Public Relations +1.202.292.4572 Melissa@dbcpr.com