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CSU, Chico Chosen for Hall of Fame for Excellence in Collaboration
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: 04-28-2010
Kathleen McPartland
Public Affairs
530-898-4260
Kathy Fernandes, director
Academic Technologies
530-898-6294
Wimba’s Hall of Fame for Excellence in Collaboration aims to acknowledge and celebrate educators around the world who have shown exemplary innovation and creativity in their use of the Wimba Collaboration Suite. The Wimba software suite enables the creation of online instruction, meetings, seminars and the effective delivery of academic and administrative help.
The five inductees are CSU, Chico; Cobb County School District in Marietta, Georgia; Idaho Digital Learning Academy in Boise, Idaho; the University of Georgia; and Kamehamea Schools Distance Learning.
CSU, Chico is the longest-tenured user of the Wimba software, starting in 1999. The University was the first Wimba customer to use video, create a rubric for measuring the success of online courses, as well as offer true hybrid classes in which students could log-in live online to classes simultaneously being taught on campus in a face-to-face classroom. In its presentation, Wimba officials also noted that CSU, Chico is a global pioneer of distance education.
The exemplary class submitted by the Technology and Learning Program at CSU, Chico, was taught by Chunyan Song, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. Song assigned the memoir “Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia” to her sociology students. The author, Savo Heleta, addressed the class live from his home in South Africa using Wimba Classroom. Students were so inspired by the author’s personal transformation and devotion to world peace that they collected funds to purchase him a new laptop with a built-in camera after learning he borrowed one for their lecture.
“The Chico team in Academic Technologies is constantly trying out new uses of technology, and we are currently piloting using Wimba for capturing classroom lectures,” said Kathy Fernandes, director of Academic Technologies. “We were extremely pleased by Wimba’s recognition of our innovation.”
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