Another post for a good friend (Gavin Ng), so no $ involved 🙂
Breaking the Barriers in Language and Distance Learning — Armstrong-Hilton Launches WebSwami 1.0
WebSwami is an online innovative language and communications training system, combining compelling interactive activities, personalized video feedback, rapid course development tools, and a powerful student tracking interface. The system offers the best of both worlds: new innovations in e-learning with the personalization and intimacy of the traditional teacher-student classroom relationship.
Hong Kong, (PRWEB) October 14, 2008 — Armstrong-Hilton Limited, the language and communications training company, today announced the launch of WebSwami 1.0.
Built on Adobe’s Flash Technology, WebSwami incorporates enhanced mainstream e-learning activities as well as a number of unique features:
- Straight-to-Server WebCam Video Recording – Both instructor and learner benefit from unique video recording capabilities, used for creating activities and giving performance feedback, and practicing realistic real-time simulations respectively.
- Voice Graph Voice Graph – WebSwami includes a spectrograph which highlights changes in voice intonation as well as the more traditional stress fluctuations, resulting in more accurate pronunciation, effective subtle expression and increased fluency.
- Centralized Student Tracking – Instructors access unmarked exercises from all assigned lessons and courses in one centralized list, ordered by submission time – saving time and ensuring prompt review/feedback.
- Personalized Feedback – Video, audio and text feedback messages, from all courses and instructors, are delivered to the learner as soon as they log-in through a centralized message in-box to help maintain motivation and promote language self-awareness. Also, for the first time, enabling instructors to incorporate gestures and physical demonstrations, making e-learning as natural as classroom teaching.
- Easy Course Creation – All instructors are empowered to create material quickly and easily by using the straight-to-server webcam recording capability, 1-click activity generation and a centralized course management system.
WebSwami’s lead developer and designer, Gavin Ng said, "By using Flash Multimedia & video recording, we’ve taken the next leap forward in language and communications training. So far other systems have avoided integrating video recording, perhaps due to technical difficulty or believing video is inappropriate for learning spoken language. In contrast, we believe video is the missing ingredient in making online training more effective, more personal, and most importantly — more motivating; especially when you take into account how poor completion and retention rates generally are in e-learning."
According to Managing Director, Peter Day, "With the release of WebSwami, not only are we making our mark on the training industry, we are enabling educators to make a greater impact on learners with cutting edge video and multimedia technology, 24/7 online course and audio/video support (without needing instructors on standby) and by making any classroom practice benefits available even to distance learners, thus increasing revenue and reach."
"Organizations also benefit from a much lower cost of entry. The web is much larger in scale than traditional language labs, so we’re offering the freedom of affordable perpetual licenses for hundreds to even infinite concurrent users; freeing institutions from annual renewal headaches and backward restrictions. With Flash being ubiquitous on every web browser, learners can really ‘learn-on-the-go’ with zero hardware investment." When pressed for expectations about this launch, Mr Day replied, "In early demos our customers have been stunned by the interactivity and ease of the system; so much so that that they’ve even seen applications beyond our initial designs, such as communications, sales and product training, and even dramatic arts and sign language learning. So the next few months will be very exciting, as we roll out even more features for WebSwami."
To learn more about WebSwami and to arrange a demonstration please visit WebSwami.com or contact Mr Gavin Ng directly.
About Armstrong-Hilton Limited:
For over a decade Armstrong-Hilton has trained and developed in-house training applications for its clients which include universities, governments, public bodies and multinational corporations from the Asia-Pacific region.
Tags: Adobe, Armstrong-Hilton Limited, Asia-Pacific, communications training, communications training system, e-learning, Gavin Ng, Managing Director, multimedia technology, Peter Day, rapid course development tools, web browser, WebSwami 1.0
