Enhanced Usability and Accessibility, Extended International Support, and Additional LMS Integrations Enable Best-in Class learning Experience and Facilitate System-Wide Adoption

Pleasanton, California (May 27, 2009) –

News Facts:

* Because 21st Century students learn differently, today’s educators need 21st Century tools to reach them. In response to this need, Elluminate, Inc. announced today the newest additions to its family of web, video, and audio social learning solutions designed for education.
* Built on the company’s No User Left Behind(TM) technology, the Elluminate Learning Suite(TM) now includes Elluminate Live!® V9.5, Elluminate Plan!(TM) V2, and enhancements to Elluminate Bridges for learning management system integrations.
* With the Elluminate Learning Suite, administrators can meet student demands, leverage limited instructor resources, provide sustainable professional development, create a culture of collaboration, and promote technology adoption system wide, while dramatically reducing travel and infrastructure costs.
* At the same time, educators can more easily make the transition from the physical to virtual classroom and facilitate a best-in-class learning experience with session planning, live interaction, and on-demand recordings.

Supporting Product Information:

* Enhancements to Elluminate Live! V9.5 include:
o Improved audio fidelity and significantly reduced audio time lag for high-bandwidth users, along with higher video frame rates with reduced video bandwidth requirements, for easier, more natural communication and smoother video motion with near-lip-sync audio.
o Enhanced, easy-to-use teaching tools, including refreshed user interface, redesigned whiteboard text editor, drag-and-drop graphical screen explorer, application sharing configuration preferences, recording reminder, and streamlined recording playback, that increase moderator control, facilitate presenting, enhance participant experience, and simplify use of recordings
o More robust breakout functionality with ability to drag and drop participants to and from rooms for easy distribution. Instructors can quickly copy content to selected or all rooms and easily move student-created content back to the main room for class discussion. Moderator can allow participants to move from room to room on their own for round-robin exercises or multiple tutoring sessions.
o Expanded accessibility for the visually impaired with audio notifications of recording start and stop, improved navigation for screen reader users, and option to include speaker notes in whiteboard slides for screen reader narration.
o Added support for users worldwide with Ubuntu Linux client, streamlined deployment of multiple languages without disruption to localized users, and ability to display local telephone number formats outside of North America for audio conferencing integration.
o Client user interface enhancements, including modernized graphical icons and more intuitive placement of polling response options.
* Designed for organizing, scripting, and packaging content and activities before the live session,Elluminate Plan! 2.0 now includes:
o Significantly expanded command set to build in even more interactivity
o Ability to set session parameters for easy automatic setup before class begins
o Drag-and-drop construction and editing that facilitates plan development
o Plan validation tool that enables self-service troubleshooting and cuts development time
* Elluminate Bridges now include support for:
o ANGEL® Learning Management Suite 7.3 and 7.4
o Blackboard Learning System – Enterprise 7 or higher, including Release 9
o Blackboard Learning System – CE Enterprise 6 or higher
o Blackboard Learning System – Vista Enterprise 4 or higher
* In addition, Elluminate and Desire2Learn have partnered to develop an integration to the Desire2Learn Learning Environment, which will be available later in 2009

Availability Information:

Elluminate Live! V9.5, Elluminate Plan! V2, and the enhanced Elluminate Bridge for ANGEL Learning will be generally available in July. The enhanced Elluminate Bridges for Blackboard are available now, while the new Elluminate Bridge for Desire2Learn will be available later this year.

Source: Elluminate