Fronter partners with Elluminate to combine live e-learning within its virtual learning environment

Fronter, one of the top three providers of learning platforms for schools in the UK, has announced a new strategic partnership with Elluminate, Inc. The learning platform enables education to take place online, enhancing collaboration between students, teachers and parents. Fronter will embed Elluminate’s real-time virtual classroom and web conferencing technology into its platform free of charge.

Elluminate Live!® is a real-time virtual classroom environment designed for distance education and collaboration. Academic institutions worldwide use Elluminate technology to extend the physical boundaries of the traditional classroom and add live discussion and dynamic interaction to asynchronous distance learning. Elluminate Live! has become the educational standard for engaging students, enhancing learning, and improving comprehension..

Fronter will include two Elluminate solutions as part of its Open Learning Platform: an unlimited-use, limited functionality version and a fully functional version Live! for up to three participants. The addition of these fully integrated services will provide educators and students with a comprehensive, real-time collaboration system that is embedded and facilitated directly within the Fronter environment.

Fronter, is an open-learning platform that combines almost 100 easy-to-use web tools for learning, teaching, communication, personal work, portfolios and publishing. It is working with more than 1000 schools and almost a third of all UK LAs to help them implement a learning platform in line with the new government target for all learners to have an online personalised learning space by 2008.

Elluminate is a real-time virtual classroom designed for distance learning and collaboration in academic institutions. It offers an affordable service that duplicates any learning activity, from lectures and presentations to small group discussions and debates.

"Fronter and Elluminate share a commitment to enhancing and facilitating the process of teaching and learning for academic institutions of all levels," said Roger Larsen, international managing director of Fronter. "By including industry leading real-time collaboration from Elluminate in the Fronter solution, we are offering our customers the most feature-complete collaboration platform on the market"

In May 2007, Fronter was chosen by the London Grid for Learning (LGFL) to provide and implement a learning platform to all London schools. The solution, known as the London MLE, is an integrated learning and management system based on Fronter’s open learning platform. The partnership has encouraged nearly 400 schools to implement the platform, including 42% of all secondary schools.

Bill Gayler, UK managing director added: “This new partnership is fantastic news for our customers across the country. We are constantly looking for new innovative ways to improve and develop our platform, so teachers, parents and students alike can share their work quicker and easier.

"We are extremely pleased to partner with Fronter to extend the company's popular virtual learning environment to include live eLearning and web collaboration, while expanding our presence in the European marketplace," said Maurice Heiblum, president of Elluminate Inc. “Integrating Elluminate Live! will help ensure that students are fully engaged in learning, communicating and collaborating in real time on a global level."

On an annual basis, Fronter brings together 100 pedagogy and teaching experts from across the globe to discuss industry trends. It relies on the findings from this forum to ensure the product evolves to meet the future needs and wishes of the community. For further information please go to www.fronter.co.uk.

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

• Fronter was founded in Norway in 1998 and is now used by more than four million users across nine countries. Fronter is used by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) for their talk2learn platform and work with a large number of UK schools, colleges and local authorities.
• Fronter is a 3^rd time winner of the European Seal of E-Excellence in Gold.
• Since its formation, Fronter has gone from strength to strength with its increasingly popular open learning platform, which offers a web-based and multilingual platform where students and teachers alike can benefit from collaboration and learning.
• Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Elluminate has served more than 200 million web-collaboration minutes to over 3 million teachers and students located in 184 countries.
• The winner of several prestigious awards, Elluminate is one of Deloitte’s 50 Fastest Growing Technology Companies and is positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing, 2007.
• Elluminate Live!® is a Live!registered trademark of Elluminate, Inc.
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