NEW YORK, NY – (January 11, 2007) – Horizon Wimba announced this morning that its virtual classroom solution – Live Classroom – has been selected as a finalist in the ‘Best Collaboration Solution’ category for the prestigious 2007 Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Codie Awards. Live Classroom was a finalist among more than 1,000 award nominations.
Already being used by hundreds of education institutions worldwide, Live Classroom not only boasts typical virtual classroom features such as audio, video, application sharing, and content display, but it also has several important points of differentiation that make it a unique fit for education institutions, such as:
· Integration with course management systems (CMS): Live Classroom integrates with CMS’s such as ANGEL, Blackboard, Moodle, and WebCT so thoroughly that it practically appears as a native CMS tool. Integration points include single sign-on authentication, settings configuration, and calendaring.
· Ease-of-use: Via its CMS integrations, Live Classroom is easy to use because it allows users to follow the same work flow of other tools with which they’re already comfortable and familiar.
· Easy-to-access: Live Classroom is a thin-client, requires minimal bandwidth, and is accessible on Macs.
· Part of Horizon Wimba’s Collaboration Suite: When combined with Horizon Wimba’s other tools, Live Classroom helps form a complete Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE). Horizon Wimba offers additional collaborative software for online education such as instant messaging, assessment, content authoring, and voice tools, thereby allowing institutions to purchase all the tools for their collaboration needs from Horizon Wimba – creating a single point of contact and a complete solution for collaborative online learning.
· Customer Service: Free online training for faculty and staff, 24x7 end user support, and a dedicated Professional Services Manager for each customer.
According to the Codie Awards website, in 1986 the Excellence in Software Awards program was established by the Software Publishers Association (SPA), now the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), so that the pioneers of the then-nascent software industry could evaluate and honor each other’s work. In 1993, the Excellence in Software Awards became the Codie Awards. The Codie Awards holds the distinction of being the only peer-recognition awards program of its kind in the industry, providing a unique opportunity for companies to earn the praise of their competitors.