Wireless Generation Announces mCLASS^®, Breakthrough Mobile Platform for K - 12 Assessment Needs

Agreements to Develop Mobile Solutions for State Reading Assessments And Partnerships with Key Reading Publisher to be Announced at IRA

First Wireless Generation Application Will Be Reading Tool, Ideal for Meeting "Reading First" Assessment Requirements

New York, NY - April 17, 2002 - Wireless Generation, a dynamic new company dedicated to producing state-of-the-art handheld technology products for K - 12 education, announces the arrival of mCLASS, a breakthrough assessment platform upon which mobile observational assessment tools across the curriculum can be built.

Wireless Generation will announce this month at the International Reading Association (IRA) annual conference, agreements to develop mobile solutions on mCLASS for several states' early reading assessments. It will also announce partnerships with test assessment publishers to develop reading assessment products that run on the mCLASS platform. The IRA conference will be held in San Francisco April 29-May 2, 2002.

These development partnerships signal that mCLASS is fast becoming the standard platform for mobile, handheld observational assessment tools. Any instrument that is designed for observational assessment can be adapted to the mCLASS system.

Larry Berger, CEO of Wireless Generation said, "We're thrilled to make mCLASS available for states and publishers who want to make their assessment instruments more accessible to teachers. mCLASS is the perfect platform for making classroom-based assessment easier to do. When we started our company, we made a deliberate decision to find out exactly what teachers needed rather than try to impose on them tools we thought might be good for them. So we spent a great deal of time watching how teachers teach. It became quite clear to us that educators were spending enormous amounts of time collecting, tabulating, and otherwise organizing data using paper-based standard observational assessment instruments. We realized that if they could collect data electronically, the time-consuming 'back-end' work would go away, freeing teachers to spend more time on instruction. mCLASS is designed especially for classroom teachers to help them with their ever-increasing assessment needs."

Also at the IRA conference, the company will preview mCLASS:Reading™, its own early reading assessment tool that runs on the mCLASS platform. mCLASS:Reading enables state and local education agencies to be compliant with the assessment requirements of Reading First, a part of the Bush administration's reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that provides assistance to states to ensure that every student can read at grade level or above by the end of third grade.

Specifically, Reading First requires "classroom-based instructional reading assessment." mCLASS:Reading is designed to enable teachers to perform those assessments easily and as an integral part of their classroom instruction. mCLASS:Reading will offer educators both benchmark and ongoing assessment tools for all the essential components of reading instruction required by Reading First: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary development. Wireless Generation has worked with top K - 12 assessment experts to design mCLASS:Reading and with key reading publishers to ensure their leveled books can be used with mCLASS in day-to-day instruction.

Said Larry Berger, CEO of Wireless Generation: "In addition to giving teachers instant data on student reading performance, we've designed mCLASS:Reading to offer educators longitudinal reports on individual, class, school or district progress. mCLASS:Reading will give teachers both the data and the time they need to ensure every student is a successful reader."

About Wireless Generation
Wireless Generation is a privately held company, founded in late 2000 on the belief that teachers and school administrators deserve a new generation of highly mobile, easy-to-use tools that support their assessment and management needs and lead to greater accountability. Wireless Generation tools streamline the record-keeping tasks involved in observational assessment making it possible to easily transform the work of classroom teachers into rich data about students' progress and learning needs.

The company's team brings to the task years of experience in teaching, education research, software engineering, and design.

Wireless Generation is located at 11 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010. The company can be reached at 212 213-8177 and on the Web at www.wirelessgeneration.com

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