Last modified: Monday, April 19, 2010
IU Office of Scholarships, GameZombie.tv honored with Webby Awards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 19, 2010
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A Web site designed by Indiana University's Office of Enrollment Management and a video game review Web site created by IU students were named Official Honorees of 2010 Webby Awards.
Hailed as the "Internet's highest honor" by The New York Times, the nearly 70 categories of Webby Awards range from "Activism" to "Student" and honor excellence on the Internet (including Web sites, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile Web sites). Entries are judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.
The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15 percent of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement. Nearly 10,000 entries were received from all 50 states and over 60 countries.
The Enrollment Management Web site is part of the "Congratulations! You've Earned Your Stripes!" recruitment campaign and was created by the Office of Scholarships in collaboration with the Systems, Design and Development team, said Sarah Booher, director of IU's Office of Scholarships. The site was honored in the "School/University" category.
"The campaign was created for recipients of the highest level of our automatic academic scholarships -- the IU Excellence Scholarship for Indiana residents and the IU Distinction Scholarship for non-residents," said Booher.
The "Congratulations! You've Earned Your Stripes!" site is a companion to a package that was sent to admitted high school seniors who earned the automatic academic scholarships along with a red-and-white striped IU scarf. The site shares the history of IU's "stripes" tradition through photos, stories and videos and invites potential students to submit a photo posing with their new striped scarf.
"It is wonderful to be recognized, but the most exciting part of the campaign was the student response," Booher said.
Spencer Stuart (known in online communities as Spencer Striker) created GameZombie.tv, a video-based video game review site, as a thesis project when he was earning a master's degree in Immersive Media Environments at IU's Department of Telecommunications. IU's GameZombie program is now run by Andrew Benninghoff, a graduate student in the Department of Telecommunications.
This is the third consecutive year GameZombie has been honored with a Webby, each time in the category of Online Film and Video. Stuart currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in the school's Media Arts and Game Development Lab. He is also working toward a doctoral degree in Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Communications and Technology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
In 2006, Indiana University received an Official Honoree Webby Award for a National Science Olympiad Web site designed by the IU Office of Creative Services. IU received a top honor (Best Web site, School category) for its 2007 Webby Award, "10 Ways IU is Red Hot," also created by the Office of Creative Services.
Also on the list of Official Honorees for Webby Awards this year are Greenpeace, CNN, Salon.com, People.com, and The Onion.
The 14th Annual Webby Awards will mark the culmination of Internet Week New York 2010, which will return to New York for its third year from June 7-June 14.
