Near-Time gets High Marks in Education Sector with Hosted eLearning and Collaboration Suite; Enables Classrooms and Groups Across Departments and Institutions to Share Information via Integrated Blogs, Wikis and Group Calendars.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Today, Near-Time announced that their new hosted collaboration service of the same name is in use at hundreds of schools, and made public the details of several implementations. Near-Time gives educators and their students an academic platform that taps into the power of blogs, Wikis and group calendars, enabling individual classrooms, and groups across campuses and institutions to share files and information. By employing familiar metaphors and easy-to-use, Web-2.0 based tools, Near-Time makes it easy for schools to deploy hosted collaboration communities fostering improved learning and better communications amongst all stakeholders: students, teachers, administration, educational boards, and parents.

Near-Time combines the non-linear, ad hoc collaboration of Wikis with the time sensitive, broadcast nature of blogs, bringing these two distinct but important types of collaboration together. Users can create a collaborative community within seconds. Members of a workspace can privately collaborate and make some or all of their content publicly available. Approachability is assured with an intuitive interface and a standards-based architecture. Users can access Near-Time via any modern browser, making it easy for schools to collaborate externally and internally within existing environments.

"Near-Time gives educators and their students a platform that supplements classroom learning by offering an easy way to post assignments, submit work, and share notes and other files, all within the context of classroom discussions," said Reid Conrad, CEO of Near- Time. "Looking beyond the classroom, teachers, administrators, school boards and parents can use Near-Time to collaborate on curriculums, and graduate school students and professors can use it to share Web- based information and research across institutions. Near-Time addresses the critical gap between unstructured communications tools like email and highly structured classroom-specific eLearning solutions."

Schools like Chicago-based Columbia College, New Mexico State University, and Northwestern University are using Near-Time as a platform that supplements classroom learning.

Journalism professor Barbara Iverson at Columbia College Chicago uses Near-Time to enhance communications with students and other teachers. "I use Near-time in several of my classes to post assignments, answer questions from students and provide them with an online forum to publish their stories. Teachers use Near-Time to create shared resources and assignments. I have found this the easiest tool to use with users who range in experience from newbies to techies. It gives the students a good introduction to online publishing and content management technology."

Iverson said she loves the fact that students can make their content public, as has been done at the following spaces: http://intheloop- space.near-time.net/news and http://car-06.near-time.net/news. In addition to posting articles, her journalism students can also upload, store and reference multimedia files like Photoshop images.

After evaluating various Web-based solutions, Bethany Bovard and Julia Parra, project coordinators at New Mexico State University, selected Near-Time to support the Regional Educational Technology Assistance (RETA) program (http://reta.nmsu.edu). RETA is a statewide program that serves the professional development needs of New Mexico's K-12 educators. Parra is working with RETA to deploy Near- Time, initially to approximately 50 RETA instructors who are also K-12 educators from across the state. They will use it to help teachers communicate and collaborate with each other as well as to communicate with colleagues and perhaps even legislators across the state.

"Finding an online collaborative service like Near-time has been a goal of ours," Parra recently stated. "We hope that it will fill a major gap for RETA as a tool for communication, collaboration, and the creation of valuable teacher resources. We envision the use of Near-Time will also help us in our efforts to promote RETA's accomplishments over the last 10 years. Since funding for educational technology has decreased, even in the light of the need for 21st Century Skills, it is vital to find effective ways to get the word out about how teachers are using technology in their classrooms to improve teaching and learning."

Parra and Bovard are also working with NMSU's College of Extended Learning on an online teaching and learning certificate program that will utilize tools such as Near-Time to support their goals for an exemplary program.

Near-Time has become an essential tool in Northwestern University journalism Professor Rich Gordon's Media Management Project class. It helps his graduate level journalism students collaborate on projects in which they research new products for local and regional media companies. "My students are looking at new ways to generate revenue for their publication 'clients'," Gordon said. "Our class needs to brainstorm and Near-Time is a great communications medium for this. Near-Time fosters a team environment and helps us collaboratively author documents." Gordon selected Near-Time after previously using the university's online course management system. The course management system was good for distributing documents, but he says Near-Time provides a much better environment for collaboration and calendaring.

About Near-Time

Near-Time is an innovator in advanced, hosted collaboration solutions. Near-Time integrates Weblogs and Wikis with Web technologies to enable groups to work together more effectively. Near- Time is in use in over 40 nations by hundreds of businesses, academic institutions, government agencies and non-profit organizations to maximize internal and external collaboration. Commercial plans start at $4.95 per month for unlimited members and unlimited collaborative communities. For more information, go to www.near-time.com.