Edublog Awards 2006 – nominations open

I’m delighted to announce the third international Edublog Awards – the independently run, community-based awards programme which recognizes and promotes excellence in the educational use of social software.

As the reality and potential of distributed learning and distributed learner identities and communities are increasingly acknowledged, articulated and understood, education moves further towards facilitating truly learner-centered and learned driven environments.

A lot has changed in the world of educational technology since this time last year. The continuing rise and mainstreaming of easy to use network-as-platform applications, and increasing access to affordable online speed and space, have seen the continued expansion of users of all ages creating and communicating online.

Learners and educators still however face difficult issues around network restrictions, around data protection and ownership, and around commercial protectionism. This year has also seen a marked increase in hostility towards social networking sites in the US, demonstrating a widespread lack of appreciation of the informal and formal educational value of user-centered applications.

The Edublog awards are more relevant than ever in this climate – a space for us to refocus the debate surrounding young peoples use of technology as irresponsible, dangerous or illegal, and look at the positive, powerful and transformative work which continues to be demonstrated.

This year there are ten categories:

• Best audio and/or visual blog

• Best group blog

• Best individual blog

• Most influential post, resource or presentation

• Best library/librarian blog

• Best newcomer

• Best research paper on social software within learning and teaching

• Best teacher blog

• Best undergraduate blog

• Best wiki use

Nominations:

Again, nominations are made confidentially. Please email in your nominations to the awards address: 2006awards@googlemail.com

Only current edubloggers are invited to nominate contenders. If you post publicly, and produce some content related to education, you are recognized as an edublogger for the purposes of this competition and are eligible to nominate. Please include your blog url with your nominations.

Each participant is able to make a maximum of two nominations per category. Self-nomination is perfectly acceptable, but you are encouraged to nominate the blogs, projects and papers that you genuinely believe to be outstanding examples of practice. Please list your nominations in order of preference. You may enter the same person or site for more than one award.

Nominations are open from 8 November to 30 November. When you have decided on your nominations for all of the categories you want to propose, you can cut and paste the template provided into the body of an email, complete it and send to the awards email address: 2006awards@googlemail.com

The most popular, eligible nominations in each category will be available to vote on from 2 December to 14 December. Winners will be announced live at a special broadcast awards ceremony currently scheduled for 15 December 1500 GMT.

Good luck to everyone! Let’s build an irresistible argument!

Josie Fraser