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Connected Educator awardees honored

Winning the 2014 Connected Educator Awards were: Melody Fortune (left), assistant professor of health care management; and Corlis Snow, associate professor of teacher education and coordinator of elementary education.

The Office of Information Technology sponsored an award luncheon yesterday to acknowledge the two winners and 17 nominees for the OIT 2014 Connected Educator Award.

The awards were offered for the first time by OIT in conjunction with Connected Educator Month’s theme of “stimulating and supporting innovation in the field.”

Winning the awards were Melody Fortune, assistant professor of health care management; and Corlis Snow, associate professor of teacher education and coordinator of elementary education.

Other nominees included: Ann (Georgeanne) Brown, Karen Fosheim, James Terry Harbin, Vicki Hartley, Michael H. McNeece, Emily Newman, Bryon C. Pickens, Leslie Green-Pimentel, Leslie Fadiga-Stewart, Betty Sylvest, Vicki Webster, John Tiftickjian, Charles Westmoreland, Franco Zengaro and Yongqin Zhang.

Students were asked in Canvas — Delta State’s online course platform — to nominate a faculty member who had positively contributed to their learning experiences by using Canvas or instructional technology to connect with them personally, while also teaching them.

Each student was asked to briefly explain how the faculty member utilizes the instructional technology to connect with students. Awards were granted to the two faculty members who received the most nominations. The other nominees received certificates of recognition.

Millions of educators around the world have participated in professional development opportunities as part of Connected Educator Month the past two years. Originally developed by the U.S. Department of Education and its partners as part of the Connected Educators initiative, CEM offers highly distributed, diverse, and engaging activities to educators at all levels.

Based on its success in 2012 and 2013, the initiative is poised to reach even more educators in 2014, through expanded partnerships and enhanced programming.

The goals of CEM include:

* Getting more educators proficient with social media to improve their practice
* Deepening and sustaining learning among those already enjoying connection’s benefits
* Helping schools credential/integrate connected learning into their formal professional development efforts
* Stimulating and supporting innovation in the field

The Canvas Learning Management System, launched in 2012, is used by more than 600 colleges, universities and school districts as a massive online course platform. Organized by Instructure Inc., the program was selected by Cisco Networking Academy to power “the world’s largest classroom.”