"The language teaching profession has always been progressive in its use of technology,” said Glastonbury School District Foreign Language Director Christy Brown, “and Glastonbury has long been recognized as one of the leaders within the language learning market. Our teachers are highly skilled and we believe the time is right to expand and develop our elearning courseware and make it available on the Internet. Our students are online, our faculty is online, and the Internet is now reliable enough to handle the rigors of our language elearning content.”

Using ScribeStudio.com Course Builder, members of the Glastonbury foreign language faculty will be able to author online elearning courses without any programming training or knowledge. Using ScribeStudio.com Site Builder, they will be able to create their own, customized, password protected Virtual Classroom and invite their students to join them. With Test Builder, the teachers will assess their students’ progress against course objectives and track performance through Report Card functionality.

“Glastonbury’s use of ScribeStudio.com for the pilot program illustrates the potential of the Internet for elearning and distance education. The Web supports dynamic audio and video content unlike traditional text books, and such content is clearly very important to language learning,” said John Cervieri, Chairman and CEO of DLI. “In addition, teachers can conduct live classroom training through their accounts using ScribeLIVE! or hold office hours online from any location simply using a $20 web camera.”

“We believe that ScribeStudio.com Course Builder provides an easy-to-use authoring tool enabling educators to enhance their creativity and focus on delivering meaningful content to their students online. These courses are the perfect complement to the technology provided by our traditional in-classroom instructional systems” said Ron Remschel, President of SANS Inc.

Tech savvy faculty members might also take advantage of ScribeStudio’s improved ability to link with external web servers and Internet resources, such as file sharing networks, databases, web applications, and more. This capability allows Subscribers to work within their ScribeStudio account and benefit from the easiest to use authoring tools on the market, while leveraging any documents, folders or files that might exist on a school intranet or web-accessible location.

“Our educational and business goal is to constantly improve our elearning programs,” continued Brown. “High costs, budgetary constraints and the need for software programming training have been barriers in the past for us to access the otherwise wonderful opportunities of elearning and digital content. Because ScribeStudio is Web-based online, we look forward to adding eLearning to our overall program and remain an innovator in the teaching of foreign languages.”

The Glastonbury CT Public Schools, in partnership with the entire community, prepare students in a safe, supportive, and dynamic environment to think critically, communicate effectively, and act ethically and responsibly. Their mission statement says they believe in the value of education for every child. They claim to challenge each student to reach his or her potential and become a productive citizen of the technological, diverse, and global community.

For additional information, visit the ScribeStudio eeb site, at www.ScribeStudio.com, the Press Room at http://www.dli.com/about/news.jsp and our corporate Web site at http://www.dli.com.

SANS Inc. (Software and Network Solutions) is a provider of elearning educational technology and the Exclusive Licensor of Sony Language Learning Software products. Visit the SANS website at www.sansinc.com.

Distance Learning, Inc. is an independent software company that designs, develops and delivers cost-effective applications for elearning and online training. Its complete elearning solution suite includes software and professional services for the corporate, academic and government markets.