My professional growth in the past year is owed to so many individuals. Wish I could nominate each of you for an award. This was extremely tough! I tried to nominate folks I hadn’t previously nominated and/or I thought hadn’t been nominated by another person. Here are my nominations for the Edublogs 2010 awards. I have learned by their examples. My knowledge as well as my passion for learning and collaboration I owe to them. Several others not on this list have also been influential to my learning. I would love to give each of these individuals special awards because they have helped my growth in so many ways but I saw that they were nominated by many others.
My Nominations
Best individual blog– Larry Ferlazzo’s Best Websites of the Day is the right mix of personal reflection posts and various resources. Throughout my blogging I’ve noticed he is one of the people I link to the most! I don’t know how he keeps up with his 3 blogs, student website, and blogging! It’s phenomenal.
Best individual tweeter– @SueWaters is one of the most helpful individuals I know! She not only has helped me with my tech problems, she is one of the first ones to leave a comment on my blog and has supported many of educational projects to help educators worldwide get free support. Plus, she gives virtual chocolates! Adore her!
Best group blog– Cooperative Learning Catalyst writes fantastic education transformation pieces! So many incredible educators take part in actively blogging and creating projects for education reform.
Best new blog– About a Teacher by Greta Sandler. Greta is an amazing blogger full of passion and reflection! She also helps support many educators and one of the kindest people I know.
Best class blog– Our Good News. Greta Sandler’s class blog is full of inspiration from her students in Argentina!
Best student blog– All About Grosse Pointe South Student blog by @thenerdyteacher‘s class! Love the collaboration with Shannon Miller’s class in Van Meter!
Best resource sharing site– The Cybraryman website has links to everything and on any topic! He deserves an educational achievement! I link to his website the most and for good reason. Some of my favorite pages include his educational chats, Edchat page, birthday pages, and more!
Most influential blog post– Bullied, Blackmailed, Defamed, Threatened by Gavin Dudeney. Gavin takes a stand against cyberbullying and over 64 comments prove why this made such an impact! Love the way the community draws together to support him.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion– #ELTChat organized by Marisa Constantinides, Andy Chaplin, Berni Wall, and Jason Renshaw has been one of the greatest chats for English Language Teachers! The podcast and resources shared are absolutely amazing as well.
Best teacher blog– A Journey in TEFL Eva Buyuksimkesyan writes great reflections about integrating various technologies. I love how she always tries new things! To me that is what a teacher blog should be full of- experimentation and reflection!
Best librarian / library blog– Library Tech Musings by Gwyneth A. Jones is a treasure trove of web 2.0 tools and technologies for libraries. The blog is also highly visual.
Best school administrator blog: Connected Principals All my favorite blogging administrators under one roof! How more awesome could that get! Thanks to George Couros for organizing this.
Best educational tech support blog– Kelly Tenkely’s I Learn Technology is full of wonderful resources and she gives you an easy way to integrate these technologies into a lesson! She also has several e-books to help you.
Best elearning blog– Elearning Learning has each of my favorite elearning blogs in one spot. Thanks Tony Karrer for putting them together in one spot!
Best educational use of audio: Breaking News English I use Sean Banville’s website so often with my students that this was one of the easiest categories! Sean deserves more than an award!
Best educational use of video / visual– David Kapuler’s Technology Tidbits David not only tells you about different technologies but he also tests them out and has an e-book about them! I love how he includes videos and different embedded examples of the technologies!
Best educational wiki– The NTChat wiki by Lisa Dabbs is full of incredibly useful information for new teachers and the design is quite lovely.
Best educational podcast– EdTechLive By Steve Hargadon. I love listening to the interviews with some of the best education reformers worldwide! Steve has great guests in his webinars that are also as a podcast! You’ll hear from Sir Ken Robinson, Diane Ravitch, and others.
Best educational webinar series– Serendipity & Topic sessions moderated by Jo and Phil Hart. Everything I know about Elluminate I owe to these 2! They are such a great support network. I have so much fun at these sessions!
Best educational use of a social network– The Educator PLN ning created by Tom Whitby offers so many group options, blogging, forums, and free webinars! Tom also shares many videos and highlights some of the best blogs!
Best educational use of a virtual world– Heike Philp’s Slanguages Conference was one of the best virtual world events I have ever attended including plays in Berlin, art displays, an iPad island and several fantastic educational presentations.
Best use of a PLN– Monika Hardy’s Innovation Lab connects her high school students with mentors worldwide from her Personal Learning Network! It’s really amazing the way she has transformed what learning and education can be!
Lifetime achievement– Howard Rheingold is one of the most amazing people I have had the privilege to talk to. He is super supportive, incredibly intelligent and works extremely hard writing books, teaching courses, conducting interviews and free webinars to help support educators worldwide! I marvel at his energy! He is a true inspiration.
New Categories
In the spirit of writing in nominations and candidates, I’m including the following categories and hope these will be accepted or considered as categories for next year. The last year I did this I was really excited to see a few of these showed up as categories this year! I hope giving awards for these categories will inspire more educational projects in these areas:
Best Example of an Educator Digital Portfolio– Ozge Karaoglu shows what an excellent educator portfolio should look like. I encourage you to read her series on creating your own digital portfolio.
Best Game-based Learning Blog– Digital ELTplay by Graham Stanley and Kyle Mawer. One of the best blogs I’ve seen that highlights various educational games with screen shots and input how to use in your classes! Love this blog!
Best Mobile Learning Blog– Nicky Hockly writes helpful posts about mobile learning and the vocabulary. She explains how to effectively integrate mobile learning.
Best Educational E-book– A New Way To Lecture by Michael Zimmerman. Michael provides readers with innovative ways to integrate technology to replace boring PowerPoint lectures! I love the ideas!
Best Blogging Series– Terry Freedman’s 31 Days to Become a Better Ed Tech Leader is a fantastic blog series helping educators learn technology basics and lean effective integration!
Best Use of Facebook for Education– Marisa Constantinides runs a fantastic English teacher development group on Facebook as does Chuck Sandy and Curtis Kelly! With nearly 7000 educators active in these groups I definitely think we should have a Facebook education category!
Best Blog Carnival– Sabrina Devita recently had a great EFL/ELL blog carnival. Thanks Sabrina for sharing such great posts and writing great snippits about each one!
Absolute Best Readers in the World- You!
Wish I could have nominated these projects but I’m a part of them and just happy that they were nominated by others! Please check them out:
- Edchat– It’s a blessing to get to collaborate with Tom Whitby (@Tomwhitby) and Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) on the biggest educational chat on Twitter! Love the projects and inspiration that come out of these chats.
- The Reform Symposium– Have to give props to Christopher Rogers (@MrR0g3rs) and Kelly Tenkely (@Ktenkely) who were such great supporters and organizers! They each deserve special awards! Check out the New Teachers Reform Symposium on January 8th!
- The Virtual Round Table Language and Technology Conference– Heike Philp (@heikephilp) and Berni Wall (@RLIBerni) have been amazing organizers of this free worldwide language and technology conference online. Hope we get that Elton nomination!
- Blog 4 Edu– Greta Sandler (@Gret) and so many other collaborators are helping educators blogging through comments, tech support, challenges, resource-sharing and more.
- The 30 Goals Facebook and Ebook– Lisa Dabbs (@TeachingwthSoul) has been such a wonderful help with this project and will be writing the upcoming book.
Challenge:
Make your Edublog Awards Nominations! Which sites and blogs have been influential for you this year?
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