I’m very please to announce the shortlist for the 2005 international Edublog Awards. Over 60 nominations forms went into providing this year’s list – which gives a very good overview of the quality, diversity and scope of how blogs are being used to support and extend teaching, learning, and research, and to create and reinforce educational communities.

Competition this year was extremely fierce, the general standard of entries was very high, and the range of entries mind-boggling. So if you’ve made it this far, you should be extremely pleased with yourself! However – many of the nominated blogs that didn’t make the final list were equally as good. So watch out for next year’s contenders!

* Most innovative edublogging project, service or programme

* Best newcomer

* Most influential post, resource or presentation

* Best designed/most beautiful edublog

* Best library/librarian blog

* Best teacher blog

* Best audio and/or visual blog

* Best example/ case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning

* Best group blog

* Best individual blog

Most innovative edublogging project, service or programme

1. Edublogs
James Farmers free open source blogs for educational professionals

2. Ed Tech Talk
Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow’s Worldbridges initiative

Worldbridges has been, since the mid-nineties, Jeff Lebow’s vision of bridging cultures throughout the world using technology. This latest venture, including the open source educational testing and ‘building a global community of homegrown webcasting’ has been a great ride for us. The we has grown from two (me: dave cormier) to many who now contribute their time to make worldbridges the place that it is. It’s great to be here with people that we were very, very happy to get on our show…

3. Elgg
Ben Werdmuller and David Tosh’s open source, personal learning landscape platform

“Elgg is the creation of Ben Werdmuller and David Tosh. Started in March 2004 the concept behind the system is to develop a fully customizable personal learning landscape. To achieve this Elgg is a hybrid of weblogging, e-portfolios and social networking. It is hoped this combination of features will provide an engaging environment for learners to create their own learning space and then connect to others, forming online communities of learning.
Learning is not a solitary pursuit and we feel real strength can be achieved from the creation of learning communities. Students interacting with: peers, tutors, lecturers, resources etc. The sharing of knowledge, ideas and problems can help foster a sense of belonging and development.”

4. Stephen’s Web
Stephen Downes – news, analisis, resources, thought, pictures, audio and more.

“Stephen Downes, Researcher, National Research Council, Canada. This may seem like a surprise nomination (it was to me) but there’s a fair bit behind the scenes at Stephen’s Web, including the Edu_RSS aggregation service, the Distributed Learning Object Resource Network, the distributed identity system, mIDm, the Referrer System, Ed Radio, distributed digital rights management, customized RSS feeds and email newsletter, and more.”

Best Newcomer

1. Blog of proximinal development
Konrad Glogowski

“My name is Konrad Glogowski and I am the voice behind the blog of proximal development. I teach Language Arts at the elementary level and I am a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto . My thesis focuses on the use of blogging communities in elementary education. This blog is an attempt to vocalize some of my thoughts on this subject and comment on the impact that blogging and blogging communities have on my classroom and my students.

My blog takes its title from the concept developed by Lev Vygotsky. The Zone of Proximal Development refers to those skills that are in the process of maturation, referred to by Vygotsky himself as “buds” of development. I believe that the community-building aspect of blogging has the potential to help students develop those “buds.”

The two posts that, in my opinion, most accurately address that concept and the focus of my blog are located here and here.”

2. FLOSSE Posse
Various writers – free and open source, open content, analyses, research, design,

“FLOSSE Posse is a group blog consisting of members of Free and Open Source Software in Education Association (VOPE) from Finland. The writers include: Teemu Leinonen, Research Group Leader, Media Lab UIAH Helsinki; Teemu Arina, CTO Dicole Ltd and Riina Vuorikari, Researcher, EUN Brussels. We carry out critical reportage of FLOSS and Open Content in Education. Dark winter nights make you think differently.”

3. Remote Access
Clarence Fisher

“Remote Access is published by Clarence Fisher, a teacher at Joseph H. Kerr School in a combined grade 7 / 8 class (basically 12 – 14 year olds). I live in the small town of Snow Lake which has approximately 1000 people and is located in the central Canadian province of Manitoba. This little slice of paradise is about 800 kms north of the Canada – U.S. border in the middle of nowhere.

Recent ( or at least fairly recent ) posts for people to take a look at to get a feel for Remote access are here, here, and here.”

4. Adventures of the 14 day thesis/beyond the 14 day thesis
Inside the White House

“The Adventures of the 14-day Thesis is a warts and all account of Mania, Drugs, Sweat and Journalism. It was an exercise in pressure cooker deadlines, frenzied plagiarism and theft that we at the UQ School of Journalism have championed as the new Gonzo Academia. It was written as the red-headed stepchild to my Masters Thesis on Blogging, New Journalism and Hunter Thompson and it’s very existence is a testimony to the 11th hour binge that happens in academic environments across the globe when the time has come and the fat is in the fire.

To all the coffeepot drinking Dawn Busters out there, I salute you.”

5. Smelly Knowledge
Jeremy Price

“Smelly Knowledge is a written journey through the intersection of learning, education, philosophy, culture, and communities, drawing upon the past and looking to the future. It is predicated on the idea that the “getting of knowledge,” the quest for understanding, and the formation of learning communities and communities of practice, should be “smelly”: complex, difficult at times, deep, and meaningful.

Jeremy Price, Ed.M., Learning and Media Specialist at CAST and Father-Trained-By-Son. Waltham, Massachusetts, USA”

6. Stuart Yeates’s blog
Stuart Yeates

“I work for OSS Watch, a national open source advisory service for higher and further education in the United Kingdom. About a year ago, US-based EDUCAUSE invited OSS Watch to blog about European open source developments on their site. Linking OSS Watch with EDUCAUSE seemed like a great way to build bridges. With OSS Watch, my natural preference for open source software is tempered by the reality of educational institutions and my knowledge as a software engineer of what software can and should be. The blog entries that I try and write show both sides of a complex issue, issues such as forking in open source, copyright on fonts and the interactions between scholarly publishers and the open access community.”

Most influential post, resource or presentation

1. A Nomad’s Guide to Learning and Social Software
Ulises Ali Mejias

“I’m glad people have found this to be a useful article. It was commissioned for Edition 7 of The Knowledge Tree journal (published by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework). I am thankful to Jo Murray, James Farmer, and the reviewers for their comments and input, as well as my Social Software Affordances class for serving as inspiration. For more info about me, see my blurb in the Best Individual Blog category.”

2. Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation
George Siemens

“My work on connectivism is a function of the disconnect I see with how learners actually learn, and how learning is being designed in our education system. This article is a draft attempt at casting learning as a network-forming process. Research in many domains – physics, neurology, biology, mathematics, sociology – is providing a common thread: a networked view of how complex structures function. Viewing the process of learning as a network eliminated many existing frustrations I encountered with behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism. Networked learning provides, for me at least, a basis for thinking about how we function within digital environments.”
George Siemens is an instructor at Red River College (RRC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

3. EdTechTalk No. 20 part 2
Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow interview Stephen Downes & Will Richardson

“The Stephen and Will show was one of our favourites too. It was great to have those two guys on talking about what they do. No exactly a tough job for us, and really I’m not sure that our names shouldn’t be in about 8 point font here. I believe that Will was on his cell phone for this conversation, as he had a power failure at his house about 15 minutes into the first half of the show. Pretty dedicated guy that Will.”

4. EdTechTalk No. 24
Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow interview Barbara Ganley

“The Barbara Ganley show is probably the best show (technically) that Jeff and I did this year. Again, with such great guests (and i say guests as Will showed up with his EDD class near the beginning and asked Barbara a few questions) it’s not tough to put together an interesting piece. That being said i’m not really sure how our shows can compare with the most important things written in the community this year… It’s fun to be nominated with them though!”

5. E-learning 2.0
Stephen Downes

“Stephen Downes, Researcher, National Research Council, Canada. This paper outlines the changing shape of online learning, as it evolves from static LMS-based online courses to a dynamic, interactive, learner-centered process inspired by the net generation and Web 2.0. Topics covered include learning communities, blogs and wikis, open content, open source, and ubiquitous learning.”

6. Future VLE – The Visual Version
Scott Wilson

“It all began with a request from the TLT-Officers list to write
something about the “VLE of the Future”, and I duly wrote something
off-the-cuff about this and posted it as the first thing on my new
work-related blog I’d just set up. My “day job” is Assistant Director
of CETIS, which means I’m on various committees in IMS and similar
organisations, contributing to various interoperability
specifications like IMS Enterprise Services and IMS e-Portfolio. As
I’m very much a visual thinker I do lots of sketches to figure out
ideas, and so I tried to put my response to TLT in the form of a
diagram with all these specifications on it. I was quite amazed at
just how popular this visualization was, and how often I’ve come back
to it myself to help me figure out various problems. I think there is
something about how it made explicit what was implicit in a lot of
people’s thinking then and now, so they can point at it and say
“that’s what I’m aiming for”. A lot of people were (and still are)
working out where the relationships might be between weblogs, social
software, e-learning, FOAF, and RSS, and to have them all on a map is
a useful thinking aid. I hope it inspires people to design e-learning
infrastructure and applications in a more innovative, human-centric
fashion that acknowledges the whole continuum of learning across
home, leisure, work, and education.”

Best designed/most beautiful edublog

1. D’Arcy Norman Dot Net
D’Arcy Norman

“D’Arcy is a software developer at the Learning Commons, at The
University of Calgary. He spends a fair bit of his time playing with
cool software, thinking about how it can be applied successfully to
the practice of teaching and learning at a University, and dumping
semi-random topics into his outboard brain. His blog combines photos
from Flickr, links from del.icio.us, and a neverending stream of cool banner images…”

2. The HUMlab Blog
Various, Umeå University – Linda Bergkvist, Digital Artist

“The HUMlab blog is a very important part of HUMlab. We have decided to make this blog our principal English (institutional) presence. The blog and our regular Swedish website are different (with different affordances) rather than just a mirror of each other. It also has an informational, collaborative, curatorial, experimental, archival, and connective function, as well as being almost a physical link to the lab- somewhere where we can try new technologies and ideas out (just like we do in the physical HUMlab). The design of the blog is important, of course, and this is something we will continue to develop. In general, we would like to think of the blog as an adaptable and flexible space.

The lab itself is a vibrant meeting place for the humanities, culture and technology located in the north of Sweden, in a town called Umeå. It is a place where people from different disciplines, both affiliated with the university as well as an array of international guests, can meet in a creative environment and where ‘thinking outside the box’, experimentation, and academic achievement is encouraged.”

3. Inline Comments
Ben Brophy

“I am so glad to be on this list. I am user interface designer/product
manager at MIT working on course management systems. I am the lead
designer for Stellar, MIT’s course management system, and devote a lot
of time to the open source Sakai project. I describe my blog as “notes
about my work” and “the life support system for an RSS feed.” The notes
get automatically uploaded my a script on my laptop, allowing me to
keep it fresh with little distraction from my other work. The aesthetic
of the site aims to make the most of sites minimal mission. ”

4. Professional Lurker
Lois Ann Scheidt

“Lois Ann Scheidt is a doctoral student specializing in Computer-Mediated Communication at the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington, USA. She is a Future Faculty Teaching Fellow at the School of Informatics at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (2005-2006). Her research focuses include adolescents in online venues, Human-Computer Interaction, and human subjects’ issues and policies relating to online research. She is a founding member of the Blog Research on Genre (BROG) Project at IU. As part of the BROG Project she is a 2004 EduBlog Award winner for the paper Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs. She was also a 2004 nominee for Best Research Based Blog. Her 2005 nominated weblog design is currently being used as a design example in several New Media design classes.”

5. Room 208
Bob Sprankle

“I am extremely honored to be nominated for the Edublog Awards! My name is Bob Sprankle. I have been a 3/4 grade Multi-Age elementary teacher for 9 years at Wells Elementary in Wells, Maine, USA. My class Room 208 has had a blog for over a year and started podcasting last April. Both mediums have completely transformed the writing instruction. Students are writing better because they have a purpose to their writing: communicating to an authentic, global audience.

If you’d like to learn more or the “how and why” of a classroom podcast, check out my own podcast/blog for teachers at ‘Bit by Bit.”

6. Tangled up in Purple
Nix

7. Tim Wang’s eLearning Blog
Tim Wang

Best library/librarian blog

1. Caveat Lector
Dorothea Salo

“Caveat Lector (“Reader Beware!”) is the backup hindbrain of Dorothea Salo, who was recently hired as Digital Repository Services Librarian (caretaker of the MARS project) at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, USA. The scattered and idiosyncratic array of topics addressed at Caveat Lector includes librarian education, text-markup languages, online-library usability, open-access publishing, amateur programming, and the DSpace institutional-repository platform.”

2. Infomancy
Christopher Harris

“Christopher Harris, School Library System Coordinator for a Western New York (USA) region providing services to 22 small, rural school districts.

Infomancy is about the daily interactions with the information world that we often take for granted but that appear magical to the non-information literate. Posts tend to cover the convergence of information, libraries, technology, and education reflecting my background as a teacher, technology coordinator, and (now) school librarian. Many thanks to all who have joined the conversation…

A couple of example posts: Infomancy by Design, Defining “Blog” ”

3. Joyce Valenza’s NeverEnding Search
Joyce Valenza

“Neverending Search welcomes librarians, other educators, any other folks involved with young people to discuss emerging technologies, searching, and the critical skills and behaviors associated with information fluency!

I am the teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School in Erdenheim, PA and the techlife@school columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Currently I am also a student in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program at UNT’s School of Library and Information Science. My research involves the impact of school library websites on teen information seeking. You can visit my library website and my personal site .”

4. Librarian.net
Jessamyn West

“I’m Jessamyn West, I’m based in Bethel Vermon, USA and I’ve been maintaining librarian.net for the past six and a half years. It started out as a generalist library blog and over time has focused into a library blog about libraries, technology and politics. I work sometimes as a libarian, sometimes as a technology educator and most of the time as an advocate for more sensible use of technology in libraries, and the importance of this in the face of the digtal divide.”

5. Open Stacks
Greg Schwartz

“Greg Schwartz wears many supervisory hats for the Louisville Free Public Library in Louisville, KY. In the past year, Open Stacks has focused on the world of podcasting, providing audio edutainment for the library and information science community and beyond. During the same timespan, the blog has also spawned the increasingly renown Carnival of the Infosciences. Open Stacks is a place for me to promote information literacy and access for all people.”

6. The Shifted Librarian
Jenny Levine

“Jenny Levine is the Strategy Guide at the Metropolitan Library System, which is the consortial headquarters for libraries in Chicago, USA, and its southern suburbs. In this role, one of her goals is to educate member librarians about new technologies and how they can improve library services. The Shifted Librarian blog is a site that helps librarians understand the coming impact of ubiquitous, always-on internet (and hence ubiquitous, always-on information) on our profession.”

Best teachers blog

1. Blog of proximal development
Konrad Glogowski

“My name is Konrad Glogowski and I am the voice behind the blog of proximal development. I teach Language Arts at the elementary level and I am a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto . My thesis focuses on the use of blogging communities in elementary education. This blog is an attempt to vocalize some of my thoughts on this subject and comment on the impact that blogging and blogging communities have on my classroom and my students.

My blog takes its title from the concept developed by Lev Vygotsky. The Zone of Proximal Development refers to those skills that are in the process of maturation, referred to by Vygotsky himself as “buds” of development. I believe that the community-building aspect of blogging has the potential to help students develop those “buds.”

The two posts that, in my opinion, most accurately address that concept and the focus of my blog are located here and here.”

2. Edublog Insights
Anne Davis

“My name is Anne Davis. I am an American from the state of Georgia in the USA. My job title is lead information systems training specialist. I work in the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education at Georgia State University. I am a former elementary teacher who still is fortunate to teach in the public schools. I have done many blogging projects in elementary schools (10-11 year olds) and at the high school (ages 15-17) and university level. (18+) Those projects can be found through the links on my blog. I really think blogs could be a platform to redefine education. I want that redefining to include the voices of students. Writing in my own weblog gives me a way to model the writing process for students and emphasize the need for using writing as a meaning-making process and as a tool for learning. The possibilities are limitless! Two posts that I feel capture the essence of EduBlog Insights are Seize the time! and Lessons Learned.”

3. Gardner Writes
Gardner Campbell

4. The Open Classroom
Jo McLeay

“My name is Jo McLeay, newly appointed Head of English at my school, an Australian secondary school for girls from age 12 to 18. This year I have had two classes of Year 9 and 10 students (ages 14 to 16) for a semester long Writers Workshop class called Recreating the Writer. I started blogging for myself after some months reading teachers and other educators’ blogs. When I saw the potential and pleasure of blogging I helped the writing classes set up blogs. These classes came into contact with Clarence Fisher’s class in Manitoba, Canada. The rest is history. I think both classes had fun and learnt lots about writing for an audience and about people in different communities.
You can see some students feedback on the project. ”

5. Room 208
Bob Sprankle

“I am extremely honored to be nominated for the Edublog Awards! My name is Bob Sprankle. I have been a 3/4 grade Multi-Age elementary teacher for 9 years at Wells Elementary in Wells, Maine, USA. My class Room 208 has had a blog for over a year and started podcasting last April. Both mediums have completely transformed the writing instruction. Students are writing better because they have a purpose to their writing: communicating to an authentic, global audience.

If you’d like to learn more or the “how and why” of a classroom podcast, check out my own podcast/blog for teachers at ‘Bit by Bit.”

Best audio and/or visual blog

1. Connect Learning
David Warlick

2. Ed Tech Posse
Various

“The EdTech Posse is a group of educational technologists, mostly affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, who get together to talk about education, teaching, learning and technology. We are on the lookout for other deputies out there to join us in on our conversations, and to help us gain better insight into this thing called educational technology.”

3. Ed Tech Talk
Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow

“This is a category that I’m very happy to be in. Edtechtalk has been a labour (I suppose labor for Jeff, he spells funny) of love for he and I these past six months. I’d also like to mention Jeff Flynn, who’s become an integral member of the team, Barbara Sawhill, Buthaina Al-Othman and Ewan McIntosh who have signed up for their own show starting Jan. 5th and a bunch of other regular ‘brainstormers’ including Art Gelwicks, John Martin, Harold Jarche, Erin Brazell, Timothy Mckean, Jason Neiffer, Brain Mull etc… etc…”

4. Pod-EFL
Various

“My name is Graham Stanley and I have been teaching English in Spain for eleven years now, and have always been interested in integrating technology into my teaching, something which is made much easier through being a member of Webheads, the online community of practice. I work for the British Council in Barcelona as an EFL teacher/ICT co-ordinator, and also for the school of Tourism of the University of Ramon Llull.

I’m hoping that pod-efl will become a place that ESL/EFL teachers can visit to find out more about how best to utilise podcasting in their own teaching situation. At the moment it is mainly the centre for my EFL podcasts, such as the Theme Tourism podcast and the Barcelona Young Learners Podcast, but I’m hoping to make Pod-efl a centre of advice for EFL/ESL educators interested in podcasting. This will coincide with the TESOL evo2006 course on ELT podcasting that I am co-moderating with Robert Diem and Scott Lockman from January 2006.”

5. SmartHistory
Beth Harris & Steven Zucker

“We see our blog, smARThistory, as an educational tool for our students (we both teach art history online and in the classroom) and as a way of reflecting on our experiments that attempt to solve pedagogical problems via multimedia. We hope that the blog will encourage the thoughtful use of images and audio in teaching. The theories that have developed over the last century and a half in the discipline of art history and related fields, have much to offer colleagues in other disciplines as they increasingly use images in support of their teaching.

Here, and here are two posts that give a sense of what we are trying to accomplish.”

6. TILT TV
Danny Maas

Hi everyone! My name is Danny Maas and I am a 35-year old teacher from Edmonton, Canada. I’ve been teaching elementary school-aged children for 12 years and, for the past 2 years, have been a district-level technology teacher facilitator for the past 1 1/2 years. I’ve always had a passion for learning, sharing, teaching, and technology and about 6 months ago began TILT – Teachers Improving Learning with Technology. What inspired me to start TILT was a ‘site-a-day’ mailing list called The Teacher List which is run by Pete McKay. What I love about this site is what I hope TILT evolves into – a site where numerous people contribute and share their ideas for the greater good. I believe that there is great power in the collective intelligence of people participating together and although I love sharing what I’ve found with others through these screencast episodes, I look forward to a day when the viewers take over and I shift my role from the leader of TILT to a fellow learner and participant. I’d love for you to vote for TILT, but in all honesty if I were voting I’d cast mine for EdTechTalk. It’s a fantastic podcast and I’ve learned a lot. I think video brings a lot of things that audio can’t, but with a single vote, the boys at EdTechTalk have mine! Good luck to all and thanks to all who participate in the voting!”

7. Vlog 3.0
Adrian Miles

Best example/case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning

1. A Case Study of Pre-service Teachers Learning to Teach with Technology during Internship (link to PDF)
Kathleen Nolan, David Friesen, Vi Macers, Alec Couros

“We are the iTeacherEd project, a group of faculty working in Saskatchewan, Canada, andwe are working to better prepare our preservice teachers for the digital age. The initiative began with a 3-yr, Canadian government-funded, action research project, but it has grown beyond our expectations. You can find a more comprehensive overview and further information on the project here. ”

2. Assessment by blog: Ethical case studies assessment for an undergraduate business management class
Carol Cooper & Lyn Boddington

“Lyn Boddington is a lecturer in business management within the Commerce Division, at Lincoln University, New Zeland. She specialises in the areas of human resource management and organisational behaviour. Lyn is also interested in improving teaching and learning in large class settings, especially those which have students from diverse backgrounds. Carol Cooper is Manager of Teaching & Learning Services. She has been involved in using technologies in learning & teaching for two decades, as student, teacher and academic support.

This was our first try out with blogs in a class situation so we are amazed and chuffed to be short-listed. The students were taking a 200 level paper (equates to a 2nd year undergraduate class) in business management. The class (160 students) was a mix of domestic and international students, many of whom were second language learners. So as well as providing a useful tool to enable learning about business ethics, we hoped that blogs would provide a way of promoting interaction between students and in particular to enable students to learn from each other.

The students learnt a lot and so did we. What did we learn? Read the paper :-)”

3. EdTechTalk No. 24
Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow interview Barbara Ganley

“The Barbara Ganley show is probably the best show (technically) that Jeff and I did this year. Again, with such great guests (and I say guests as Will showed up with his EDD class near the beginning and asked Barbara a few questions) it’s not tough to put together an interesting piece.
In our mind Barbara is a GREAT example of what can be done not only with blogs but by a teacher with passion, commitment and insight.”

4. iGeneration
Tama Leaver

“The iGeneration blog is the online core of a Communication Studies Honours course (4th year of an undergraduate degree) “iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture” run at the University
of Western Australia. The blog was the nexus that allowed a decidedly hands-on exploration of participatory culture. The assessment entailed a critical evaluation excercise of a blog or podcast; and their major assignment took to form of their own podcast. We decided to leave the entire course blog including all our seminar material, critical evaluation excercises and podcasts online, available under a Creative Commons License , as a resource that others (both inside and outside of academia) might find useful. You can view the course syllabus, and see students’ final impressions of the course.”

5. Polar Science
Thomas Hawke, Thomas Stiff, Susan Stiff, Diane Hammond (YES I Can! Science team)

“The whole Polar Science team is thrilled to have been nominated for an Edublog Award! We designed the Polar Science collaborative learning environment to allow teachers and students, (aged 10-18), to take part first-hand in the research of Canadian biophysicist, Dr. Thomas Hawke. Dr. Hawke is part of a team of scientists from across the United States and Canada who have travelled to McMurdo Station in Antarctica.

In designing the site we wanted to give students, teachers and researchers the most effective communication tools to share expedition updates, compare results of student investigations, ask and answer questions, and reflect on learning. Individual and team blogs have proven to be very effective communication tools throughout the project. Visit the site to read Dr. Hawke’s articles and to access student blogs.

Best wishes to all nominees – what an awesome group!”

6. Radcliffe Riverside LIVE
Radcliffe Riverside School

“Radcliffe Riverside is a Technology College based in Manchester UK and catering for 11 – 16 year olds. RRS Blogging system was initially provided to enable members of staff to create a 24hr notice board for their department. Since then, the school weblogs have evolved somewhat and now feature competitions, course notes / ideas / links, downloads and various discussion arenas for staff and students amongst many other things. The blogs also provide a window to the world through which staff can showcase the many talents of pupils at RRS. One such example is the impressive music department blog created and managed by Miss Done.

Blogs can also make the world a much smaller place, aptly illustrated by Mr. Kehoe’s New Zealand Blog. Mr Kehoe is an ex teacher at RRS who took up a new post on the other side of the world. Thanks to the wonders of Blogging, Mr Kehoe is never too far away from his ‘New Zealand Blog’”

7. Rhythm in Architecture
Dafne Gonzalez

“Wow! This is really a surprise. I found out about my nomination in the Webheads in Action list. I am Dafne Gonzalez, I am a Full Professor at Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela. The blog which has been nominated was created for my English for Architecture students, ages 19-22, and the Web page of this blended course can be seen at: http://dafnegonzalez.com/id3125-05/ . I created the blog to show the world the wonderful brain maps created by the students for the unit Rhythm in Architecture. It includes their brain maps, links to their blogs, and some audio recordings. I am sure my students will be enthralled with this nomination.”

8. vSKOOL.org: Linking Hurrican Victims to Online Educational Resources
Various

“The vSKOOL Blog launched October 2005 as part of a larger response to the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Created and maintained by Douglas Levin, Cable in the Classroom‘s Director of Education Policy (based in Washington, DC), the aim of our blog is to share information to enable all of us – as a community of concerned individuals, organizations, and institutions of all types – to better respond to the needs of those K-12 (primary and secondary) students and teachers affected. On the main vSKOOL site, we have assembled a clearinghouse of donated educational technology services and products, assembled resources about online learning, as well as resources to help kids to better cope with the disaster. Our relief efforts have also extended beyond the virtual world. Members of the vSKOOL coalition are deploying donations of computer labs, educational videos, and other supplies to affected schools.”

Best group blog

1. BizDeansTalk: What’s up in BizEd

“BizDeansTalk is the first blog to be run jointly by international business schools in the U.S. and Europe and is aimed at providing a platform for debate on postgraduate education, business education, and issues related to the management training sector. The project’s co-author and mediator is Della Bradshaw, editor of the “Business Education” section of the Financial Times. For more information you can visit the projects official press release.”

2. Dekita.org

“Dekita.org is an international cross-cultural community dedicated to promoting peer-to-peer communication in language learning. It was launched in May 2005 by three EFL educators: Rudolf Amman, from Switzerland, professor at the Mie University in Japan; Aaron Campbell, from the US, professor at the Kyoto Sangyo University and Barbara Dieu, from Brazil, presently teaching at the Lycée Pasteur, Franco-Brazilian secondary school in Sao Paulo.

Dekita.org highlights blogging and web-publishing projects around the world and aims at bringing together EFL / ESL educators and learners in meaningful and authentic ways. The recently launched P2P (Peer to Peer) Exchange Project facilitates connections and encourages educators to open their classrooms to the world so that learners can engage in conversation in self-directed ways, develop and further their interests, and find their own voice, beyond assignments, tasks and curricula.”

3. The HUMlab blog

“The HUMlab blog is a very important part of HUMlab. We have decided to make this blog our principal English (institutional) presence. The blog and our regular Swedish website are different (with different affordances) rather than just a mirror of each other. It also has an informational, collaborative, curatorial, experimental, archival, and connective function, as well as being almost a physical link to the lab- somewhere where we can try new technologies and ideas out (just like we do in the physical HUMlab). The design of the blog is important, of course, and this is something we will continue to develop. In general, we would like to think of the blog as an adaptable and flexible space.

The lab itself is a vibrant meeting place for the humanities, culture and technology located in the north of Sweden, in a town called Umeå. It is a place where people from different disciplines, both affiliated with the university as well as an array of international guests, can meet in a creative environment and where ‘thinking outside the box’, experimentation, and academic achievement is encouraged.”

4. Kairosnews

5. Worldbridges

“Worldbridges has been, since the mid-nineties, Jeff Lebow’s vision of bridging cultures throughout the world using technology. This latest venture, including the open source educational testing and ‘building a global community of homegrown webcasting’ has been a great ride for us. The we has grown from two (me: dave cormier) to many who now contribute their time to make worldbridges the place that it is. It’s great to be here with people that we were very, very happy to get on our show…”

Best individual blog

1. bgblogging, Barbara Ganley

“Since 2001, I’ve been using blogs and multimedia narrative, and now podcasting in my classes at Middlebury College where I am a Lecturer in the Writing Program. I keep bgblogging to reflect on my teaching-with-technology journey, to weave in developments in the field and to entice both peers and students into discussions with me about their experiences with social software and emerging technologies. A couple of recent posts that show the kind of synthesizing I try to do: from October and from September.”

2. Ideant, Ulises Ali Mejias

“What an honor to be included amongst such illustrious company! I started to blog just as I was entering the Ed.D. program in Education and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University (previously, I was Director of Learning Systems Design at eCornell). My hope (half-seriously) was that, upon reaching the dissertation stage, I would simply be able to hit the Print button. Alas, it’s not going to be that easy, although blogging has helped me to maintain continuity, become part of a community of like-minded people, and present my ideas for feedback. In essence, I am interested in exploring how the same technologies that have contributed to our disenchantment with modern life can contribute to a newfound sense of ‘Nearness.’ For a more detailed look at my research interests and writings, see my bio page, or just feel free to browse through my blog.”

3. OLDaily, Stephen Downes

“Stephen Downes, Researcher, National Research Council, Canada. Published in daily and weekly versions, OLDaily reaches readers as a web page, an email newsletter, and an RSS feed. Each issue consist of five to eight or so selected resources from the world of online learning, varying from blog posts to reports to academic papers, summarized and (sometimes) criticized in a bite-sized format. Not merely a content filter, OLDaily stresses a philosophy of open access and open learning, these views supplemented with links to the numerous articles written by the author along with slides and audio from his presentations.”

4. Weblogg-Ed, Will Richardson

“Weblogg-ed has been online since the summer of 2001 and it now holds over 4000 posts and comments about how educators are thinking about and using tools like blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasts, social bookmarking sites, Skype and others in school settings. I’m a technology supervisor for a school district in New Jersey, and I have a book coming out in March regarding the use fo these technologies in classrooms. I want to be a full time blogger when I grow up.”