We are proud to announce all of the winners of this year’s Edublog Awards!

Well done to all the winners, nominees, those that contributed nominations, voted, and participated!

A link to the recoding of the live awards ceremony will be posted on this blog soon.

For the winners, we encourage you to show off your award with the badge below. Make sure to link the badge to the page with all of the results in your category, and here is a cheats method for uploading badges in both Edublogs and WordPress blogs.

And without further adieu, here are the top three finishers in each category this year!

Best individual blog

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day

Kirsten Winkler

Free Technology for Teachers

Best individual tweeter

specialkrb

ShellTerrell

Teach_Preschool

Best group blog

The Teaching Palette

The Reading Roundup

Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning

Best new blog

The Nerdy Teacher

Box of Chocolates

Speech Techie

Best class blog

The Blog Dogs

Mrs. Yollis’ Class Blog!

Billings Beta

Best student blog

Haley’s Life – 10 years old

Chemistry: It’s “Element”-ary!! – Grade 10

Emily’s Blog – Year 3

Best resource sharing blog

Kirsten Winkler

Prekinders

Free Technology for Teachers

Most influential blog post

Joyce Seitzinger’s Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers

Joyce Valenza’s Things I think teacher librarians should unlearn (20 & counting)

Frank Noschese’s The $2 interactive whiteboard

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion

#ukedchat

#edchat

#speakloudly

Best teacher blog

The Scholastic Scribe

MR ROBBO – THE P.E GEEK

Teacher Tom

Best librarian / library blog

Bright Ideas

A Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet

Castilleja School Library

Best school administrator blog

The Principal of Change

A Principal’s Reflections

Darcy Moore’s Blog

Best educational tech support blog

The Angry Technician

Thumann Resources

Free Technology for Teachers

Best elearning / corporate education blog

edReformer

Edutopia

Rapid E-Learning Blog

Best educational use of audio

Heidisongs

SCC English Audio Boos – Patterns of Poetry

Deutsche Welle Audiotrainer

Best educational use of video / visual

Fugleflicks

ArtSnacks

ProjectExplorer.org

Best educational wiki

Metasaga

DSD Wiki

Greetings From The World

Best educational podcast

Ed Tech Crew

LearnEnglish

PortableRadio.ca

Best educational webinar series

Future of Education

Classroom 2.0 Live

Global Education Conference 2010

Best educational use of a social network

Classroom 2.0

Learn German with Deutsche Welle

English Companion Ning

Best educational use of a virtual world

ISTE – SIGMS

Daynuv.com & Giftedkids.ie MissionV Project

Quest Atlantis

Best use of a PLN

Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways series & The Educator’s PLN

Classroom 2.0

Global Education Conference 2010

Lifetime achievement

Sir Ken Robinson

Steve Hargadon

Linda Yollis

Don’t forget!

1. Voting will end on Tuesday the 14th of December (11:59 PM EST USA)! – Click here to check the time voting finishes in your local time!
2. Winners will be announced at the live awards ceremony on Wednesday the 15th of December at 7pm EST USA – Click here to check your local time!

The awards ceremony will be broadcast live in Elluminate and we’ll hold a special introduction to Elluminate 15 minutes before the awards ceremony is scheduled to begin for those that have never used it before.

Those that are announced as winners in each category will be offered a chance to speak – so if you are nominated, you may want to be prepared with a microphone and a few words if you’d like.

To join the live event just click on the following link:

https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.4B894D4EAF91C3FB2995800EC6F804

Elluminate is a Community Partner with Edublogs.

To learn more about Elluminate check out:

1. Introduction to using Elluminate
2. The Elluminate Quick Reference guide
3. Join the Configuration Room to test your connection and configure your audio

Get your FREE 3-user Elluminate vRoom HERE!

We hope to see you there!

With five full days left of voting, time is running out to cast your votes in this year’s Edublog Awards!

Don’t forget!

1. Voting will end on Tuesday the 14th of December (11:59 PM EST USA)! – Click here to visit TimeandDate.com to check the time voting finishes in your local time!
2. Winners will be announced at the live awards ceremony on Wednesday the 15th of December at 7pm EST USA – Click here to visit TimeandDate.com to check your local time!

The Edublog Awards was started as a way of highlighting those individuals, blogs, and social media tools that we all learn from on a regular basis.

Our favorite part of the awards is the lists of nominations which are visited throughout the year as a great list of resources to discover new ideas and bloggers.

But of course, the whole process and experience can always improve!

We’d love to hear from you any constructive ideas or thoughts about the awards. Are there any additional categories you would like to see?

Also, feel free to use the Wallwisher below to leave comments about your favorite blog or resource, even if it isn’t nominated.

Link to the full wall.

The nominations are up and voting is now open in the 2010 Edublog Awards.

Voting is open until 12 PM US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday December 14th…and the winners will be announced at the Edublog Awards ceremony (more on that to come soon).

The winner of each category will get:

1. Winner – A years free Edublogs Campus subscription for themselves or their institution worth US$900!
2. Winner, 1st, and 2nd runners up win one free Edublogs Pro subscription for a year!
3. As well as snazzy winner badges and the respect of your peers!

Here’s some important voting tips:

• One vote per IP per category — sorry, it’s the only way to avoid rigging, to a degree, your colleagues and students are just gonna have to go vote from home… or from their iphones
• You can vote for multiple categories at the same time, so vote once, but vote broadly!
• Results will not be displayed at all — we’re keeping them *completely* secret until the awards ceremony

About The Nominations!

You’ll notice there are more nominations, and excellent quality, this year reflecting the ever growing edublogosphere — nice work guys!

Unfortunately we can’t list every single nomination in each category — that’s too overwhelming for everyone.

This year there was over 400 nomination posts with some posts nominating in over 20 categories – for thousands of nominations!

Our intrepid team of judges combed through hundreds of nominated sites to whittle them down to a manageable number of shortlisted nominations for each category.

There are many factors that determine whether a nomination is shortlisted, and some categories were considerably more competitive than others due to the incredible number of nominations,.

Apologies in advance if your site or nominated sites don’t make it.

For example, sites weren’t shortlisted:

• If they obviously didn’t fit the category (such as Nings or wikis being nominated in blog categories)
• If they were self nominations
• If they didn’t follow the nomination submission process

Other factors used for shortlisting included:

1. For blogs and influential posts – indicators of reader engagement (such as comments, bookmarking, pingbacks)
2. For Tweeters – conversation indicators (such as number of following/followers, list been added to, types of conversations, whether account was public or private)

Due to the thousands of nominations received, there is most likely a typo or mistake or two. Let us know in the comments so we can fix it up!

About The Nomination Badges!

Yes!  We have badges for everyone who has been shortlisted

This year, the badges are inspired by traditional achievement shields given to students in the UK.

If you’ve been nominated, grab a badge from the top of the poll and it place in your sidebar linking back to the poll, nominations will be listed on those pages forevermore so wear ‘em with pride.

Here’s our CHEATS method for adding text and your badge to your blog sidebar!

So, what are you waiting for…

Go check out all those outstanding nominations, and vote for them!

For the latest up-to-date news on the Edublog Awards:

1. Follow edublogs on Twitter
2. Subscribe to the Edublog Award blog via our RSS Feed or email (add your email address to the email subscription widget in the top right sidebar)
3.  Like Edublogs on Facebook

The Edublog Awards is a great way of discovering new blogs, websites, cool ideas and resources that can be helpful to our teaching.

And next week when people start visiting those sites that made it through to the voting stage they’ll be checking them out for exactly this reason!

Trouble is it’s often hard to quickly work out what a site’s about when visiting it for the first time.

This needs to be really obvious for first time readers because they have limited time!

So here’s some tips to make it easier for your first time readers.

Text Widget in Blog Sidebar

A short blurb in a text widget in your blog sidebar is an excellent way of providing a quick overview of what you’re and/or your site is about.

Ideally it should be short, to the point and placed at the top of your blog sidebar where it’s one of the first thing visitors see.

Here’s a few examples of nominated blogs that use a Text Widget:

1. Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… – right hand side bar for Welcome
2. The Principal of Change – right hand side bar for About Me
3. Teacher Reboot Camp – - right hand side bar for Welcome
4. The Ripple Effect – Left hand side for Our work in Action

For Edublog and WordPress blogs you’ll need to use HTML for better formating of your text.

And here’s our CHEATS method for adding text and images to blog sidebars

Below is the HTML code I use in the text widget on my personal blog.

Using An About Page on a blog

An About page is where readers find out more about you and your blog. Readers often use it to decide whether to bother subscribing to a blog.

When you set up a new Edublogs or WordPress blog it automatically comes set up with an  ‘About page’. Readers access this page by clicking on About in the page links at the top of your theme or in the link in your sidebar.

The idea is you change the default text on this about page by inserting your own information — here is how-to edit your Default About Page

Please Note: To write an About Page on Blogger you would normally write it as a post and then either:

• Add a link in your blog sidebar using a Text Gadget
• or add a About Page link using a Blogger Template as Vicki Davis has done.

Writing a good ‘About Page’ is hard.

What’s written on an ‘About page’ and the types of details included is influenced by the type of blog and the intended readers.

Here’s examples of what you might write on the About Pages of different types of blogs:

1. Teacher/Personal blog
   • Start with info about yourself (as people are more likely to engage with your blog if they can relate to you as an individual)
   • Next tell them about your blog and the reasons why you blog.
   • Not too long, not too short, include photos that help readers relate to you as a person.
   • Check out Kathleen McGeady (Intergrating Technology in The Primary Classroom) About page and Kelly Tenkely (iLearn Technology) About
2. Class Blog
   • What country, state and city you are from?
   • Year (grade level), subject and age groups
   • The types of connections your class is interested in e.g. becoming blogging buddies, engaging in global projects
   • The type and size of school
   • Class or teacher contact details
   • Information for students and/or parents on what are blogs, the goals of the class blog, How to interact with the blog e.g. subscribe to blog, comment on posts, guidelines for writing appropriate comments
   • Check out Blog, Blog Blog Blog, Blog Some More We are, and Mrs. Yollis’ Classrom Blog Meet Mrs Yollis and Meet the Bloggers!
3. Group Blog
   • What’s the blog is about and the reasons why it was created
   • Provide background information on the authors
   • Check out Cooperative Catalyst’s Who We Are

Don’t forget!

1. Nominations close Friday 3 Decenber (11:59 PM USA EST)
2. Voting commences soon after nominations close and end Tuesday 14 December (11:59 PM USA EST)! – PLEASE click here to visit TimeandDate.com to check the time voting finishes in your local time!
3. Winners announced at Awards Ceremony USA EST: 7 pm,  Wedneday 15 December – PLEASE click here to visit TimeandDate.com to check your local time!

For the latest up-to-date news on the Edublog Awards:

1. Follow edublogs on Twitter
2. Subscribe to the Edublog Award blog via our RSS Feed or email (add your email address to the email subscription widget in the top right sidebar)
3.  Like Edublogs on Facebook

It has been almost two weeks since we went live with this year’s Edublog Awards and we thought you might be interested in what happens behind the scenes while the nominations are flooding in…

And more importantly get some tips on making sure your nominations count!

Each day we work through your emails to sort your nominations into lists for each category.

This year we’ve changed the process slightly and are using a Google Document so we can:

1. Publish a spreadsheet with all of shortlisted nominations for each category including links to the nominating posts (will be available after the Awards ceremony).
2. Feature snippets of comments from nomination posts about why a blog, website or individual was nominated.

So if you would like to explain why you’ve nominated a blog, website or individual we’ll do our best to include this information.

Here’s an example of what it will look like in the published spreadsheets:

This year there are 23 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.

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 or website…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
• Best use of a PLN

A ning isn’t a group blog

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:

1. Write a post on your blog linking to the blogs & sites that you want to nominate
2. 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!

And to make sure it is uber clear!

• You can’t just email us links to blogs & sites you want to nominate — you must write a nomination post on a blog or website such as a Ning or Wiki
• Your nomination post must be on a website where we can view your nominations — last time I checked we can’t see behind locked private sites
• You must email us the link to your nomination post using our contact form

Tip # 4

For the latest up-to-date news on the Edublog Awards:

1. Follow edublogs on Twitter
2. Subscribe to the Edublog Award blog via our RSS Feed or email (add your email address to the email subscription widget in the top right sidebar)
3.  Like Edublogs on Facebook

It has been almost a week since we went live with this year’s Edublog Awards. In that time we have had hundreds of nominations roll in!

It is fun to keep up with them as they come in, and we thought you might enjoy a few tools that will help you discover them as well.

This widgetbox.com widget comprises twitter search and rss feeds which regularly update with Edublog Award buzz from around the web.

Have we seen your nomination post here?

// Get the Edublog Awards widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)

Something we will be doing a bit differently this year is that at the end of the awards ceremony, we will publish a spreadsheet with all of the nominations including links to the nominating posts. We will also feature some of the comments bloggers are making when publishing their nomination posts.

This means that if you haven’t yet made a nomination, you might want to try and include a sentence or two detailing why when you do. We hope that sharing this information will make the awards process more rewarding and useful for all.

Happy nominating!

PS
Here are the rss feeds we used in creating the widget in case you want to subscribe to them in your favorite news reader.

• http://blogsearch.google.com.au/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=”edublog+awards”&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss
• http://www.icerocket.com/search?tab=blog&q=”Edublog+Awards+”&rss=1
• http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=”edublog+awards”

It’s exciting to see the nomination posts being published!

We’ve noticed quite a few bloggers are adding an Award banner or badge to their post.

To make your task easier we thought you would like some Edublog Awards banner and badges for your posts and blog — for those that don’t want to make their own.

Here you go:

Banner (450 pixels wide)

2010 Edublog Award Badge (170 pixels wide)

Nominate me badge (170 pixels wide)

Adding them To A Blog Post is as simple as:

1.  Right clicking on the banner or badge and selecting Save Image As…  to save a copy of the image onto your computer.

2.  Then insert the image into your post by clicking on Add an Image and click on Select image to upload to your blog post.

For the latest up-to-date news on the Edublog Awards:

1. Follow edublogs on Twitter
2. Subscribe to the Edublog Award blog via our RSS Feed or email (add your email address to top right sidebar)
3.  Like Edublogs on Facebook

Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for!

The Edublogs Awards 2010 is now underway.

We’re following the same approach as last two years, namely asking you to:

1. Post your nominations for the different categories on your own blog (or a website)
2. Send us the link to your nomination post via the contact form at the bottom of the Awards homepage

You can find more information on how to nominate on Awards homepage.

And we’ve added few new categories this year based on your feedback such as ….. Best School Administrator blog and Best use of a PLN

Here they are in full, nominations are open from now until Friday 3 December, voting will then be up until Tuesday 14 December and the ceremony will be rocking on Wednesday 15 December!

So go nominate your favourite blogs, twitterers, community sites, videos, podcasts and more… for 2010:

Best individual blog
Best individual tweeter
Best group blog
Best new blog
Best class blog
Best student blog
Best resource sharing blog
Most influential blog post
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
Best teacher blog
Best librarian / library blog
Best School Administrator blog
Best educational tech support blog
Best elearning / corporate education blog
Best educational use of audio
Best educational use of video / visual
Best educational wiki
Best educational podcast
Best educational webinar series
Best educational use of a social networking
Best educational use of a virtual world
Best use of a PLN
Lifetime achievement

To nominate:

1. Post your nominations on your blog, link to them and link to this site
2. Use the form at the bottom of the Awards homepage to send us a link to your nominations

(yes, I put that in there twice just so it was uber clear!)

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments