With 6 days left to nominate your favorite blogs and websites we thought you might be interested in what happens behind the scenes while the nominations flooding in…
And more importantly get some tips on making sure your nominations count!
Currently we work through your emails daily to sort nominations into lists for each category.
Each category has its own text file, and the process involves:
- Visiting your nomination blog post (submitted via our contact form)
- Copy/pasting each of your nominations, into the correct file.
This year there are 19 categories and our focus is ensuring the nomination lists are complete so when nominations close we’re ready to start the voting stage.
At this stage most nominations are transferred onto the lists except for those that:
- Obviously don’t fit the category
- Are self nominations
- Haven’t followed the nomination submission process
Once nominations close we comb through the lists to confirm all nominations fit their category and finalize the shortlisting process.
Here’s some important tips that’ll make sure your nominations count and make our job easier!
Tip # 1
You can’t nominate your own blog…especially in lots of categories….doesn’t work that way 🙂
Tip # 2
If category says it is a blog then it means a blog not a Ning, not a Wiki or other.
There are other categories for them such as:
- Best Educational Wiki
- Best use of a social networking service
Tip # 3
The nomination process is a two step process–miss one of the steps and your nominations don’t count!
The two step are:
- Write a post on your blog linking to the blogs & sites that you want to nominate (must be linked to!)
- Email us the link to your nomination post (submitted via our contact form)
If you’re nominated by someone you might want to check they remembered to send the link to their blog post via our contact form!
Tip # 4
Turn off your Snap Shots plugin for 24 hrs when you submit your nominations as we have to copy/paste each of your links from your blog post.
Snap Snots make this process incredibly slow and very frustrating!
Tip # 5
For the latest up-to-date news on the Edublog Awards:
11 responses to “What Happens Behind The Doors of The Nomination Room….”
http://7thgraderesearch.pbworks.com/
Very useful site for organizing students in doing research assignment. Contains everything they need to finish a research project from any computer.
Wondering why are you not using a FORM with individual categories for people to share their nominations rather than just a single post??
Would simplify your sorting down a great deal.
Just a thought for next year.
@Jen because unfortunately what happens is you get a lot of self nomination. While the two step process involves more work (for us) it ensures better quality by dramatically reducing self nomination.
We still get a lot of self nomination via the contact form – but they are automatically discounted because they haven’t followed the process. Public posts people as less likely to self nominate.
Most of these types of processes we’ve put in place are to minimise rigging. Similarly we have to limit voting to one vote per IP per category because people were rigging the votes also 🙁
I was delighted to be nominated this year for best individual blog by The Cornerstone for Teachers Blog, and was disappointed to see my blog didn’t make the list when it was published today. Is it too late??? Thanks.
http://thecornerstoneforteachers.blogspot.com/2009/11/nomination-time.html
Hi – I’m also happy to have been nominated (for best corporate blog) and to have submitted by own nominations, but neither are up.
Here’s my link for my nominations again (and I did submit this online & follow all the rules so I’m sure it’s just a simple error) – http://classroomcanada.blogspot.com/2009/12/very-special-sunday-post-my-edublog.html
Here’s the link where Siobhan Curious submits her nominations where my blog is nominated –
http://siobhancurious.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/the-2009-edublog-awards-my-nominations/
I hope you’re able to include these ones to the list that we can vote on.
Thanks!
Victoria
I also did a nomination post with links and submitted the form, so there may have been an oversight with my nominations too.
http://themortonschool.blogspot.com/2009/12/best-of-edublogs.html
All nominations that followed the two step processed were taken into consideration.
Unfortunately some of the categories had large numbers of nominations (for example some were well over 100). It wasn’t possible to short list all nominations because it makes it unmanageable for everyone.
This meant nominations in most categories went through a short-listing process and each nomination was examined closely by the judges.
You can read more about the process here – http://edublogawards.com/voting-is-now-open-for-the-2009-edublog-awards/
I second Rebecca’s disappointment with her blog (which I nominated) not being included in the nominations list. Several other blogs that I nominated were not included (all of which are well-established and have a large following).
My own blog was nominated yet did not make the nominations short list. This was surprising to me because a) I didn’t realize that there even WAS a short list and assumed the nomination ‘counted’, and b) the person who nominated me DID make short list and I expected his opinion about nominations to be validated.
I understand the need to short-list; what I don’t understand is HOW the nominations were short-listed. What criteria was used? Is there a reason why this wasn’t explained prior to asking for nomination submissions?
Among the short-listed nominations, there seems to be a heavy emphasis on tech blogs and 21st century thinkers, while those bloggers who focus more on the practical aspects of teaching and speak to classroom realities were slighted. Was this intended or is it only my own perception?
I really appreciate the work you all do in putting together these awards, and I’m excited about checking out new blogs that aren’t part of my PLN. I would, however, love some more information about the nomination short-list process, and would like to see some discussion about how to make the process less subjective for next year’s awards.
While I imagine that it must be disappointing for people to be nominated and then not have their blog show up in the list, I understand the reasoning and the need to get the number of “votable” items down to a manageable number – over 100 in each category would be way too many! The way I understand it, blogs (and tweeters and wikis and Nings) are shortlisted based on how well they meet the requirements of the category, how much the conformed to the nomination process, how widely read they are, how many subscribers, etc, etc… the process is all explained in the blog post mentioned above…
I think the criticisms of the process, while no doubt based on genuine feelings of disappointment, are doing a disservice to the organisers who make this whole process happen. I know from conversations I’ve had, that there is a ton of work that goes on behind the scenes and I’m sure the folk who run the thing have done the best job they can with the resources they have, and at some point we just have to accept the umpire’s decision.
Chris, I totally agree to accept the decision. The organizers put in a TON of work and I respect that.
You mentioned the criteria includes how widely-read a blog is and how many subscribers there are. This would be reasonable criteria for short-listing, though ‘widely-read’ should be defined, since many of the rejected blogs have hundreds of subscribers. I did not see that criteria posted with the nominations process (or anywhere on the awards site). Since nominations closed, I’ve seen a few things added to the site to help clarify the process, but I haven’t seen that (yet). If it existed and I overlooked it, that would change my opinion about this issue drastically.
The confusion for me and apparently others seems to stem from believing that all nominations were equally valid, providing that they were properly categorized and not self-nominations. If that isn’t the case, I think it’s fair to disclose the other criteria in short-listing so that there is no confusion for 2010.
For the past few years being nominated in the Edublog Awards hasn’t meant automatically that all nominations were included. For example, the 2008 nominations closed post highlights this – http://edublogawards.com/nominations-closed/.
Each year there are considerably more blogs/sites nominated. This year was considerably more than last year with increased quality. Short list nominations increased from a maximum of 25 in previous years to 40 in several categories for this reason.
As a general guide factors considered in shortlisting included:
1. For blogs and influential posts – indicators of reader engagement (such as comments, bookmarking, pingbacks – using metrics provided by Postrank – http://www.postrank.com/) and number of times the site was nominated
2. For Tweeters – conversation indicators (such as number of following/followers, types of conversations, whether account was public or private)
This needs to be taken as a guide only because there are 19 categories —
1) they are each very unique (the types of things considered for Best Individual Blog, Best New Blog and Best Teacher Blog are totally different from Best Student Blog and Best Class Blog)
2) some categories are considerably more competitive than others