And many thanks to everyone who nominated, voted and participated in the Awards this year.

Through everyone’s hard work, we’ve pulled together great lists of new blogs / sites, cool ideas and resources that are helpful to our teaching.

Congratulations to all nominees and winners….

The Edublog Awards Nominees 2012 List

You can check out the entire list of nominees in this Google Doc here! Or scroll to the bottom of this post to view it embedded.

Winners and nominees can grab badges at the very bottom of this page here.

Click the tabs at the bottom of the google doc to see all of the different categories. This will also show you how we ended up ranking all of the nominees and how we shortlisted the finalists.

Check out the Edublog Awards Slideshow here!

And the winners are…

Winners are chosen based on voting by the community.

1.  Best individual blog

The winner of the Best Individual Edublog 2012….2,293 total votes

–Winner: Seomra Ranga (336 votes)
–Runner Up: Speech Techie – Sean Sweeney (260 votes)
–Runner Up: Film English – Kieran Donaghy ( 183 votes)
–Runner Up: Free Technology for Teachers – Richard Byrne (152 votes)
–Runner Up: Gridjumper’s Blog (107 votes)

Check out all individual blog finalists and results here!

2.  Best group blog

The winner of the Best Group Edublog 2012….1,744 votes

–Winner: Edutopia (289 votes)
–Runner Up: ASHAsphere (226 votes)
–Runner Up: Nerdy Book Club (142 votes)
–Runner Up: Digital Leader Network (124 votes)
–Runner Up: Edudemic (103 votes)

Check out all group finalists and results here!

4.  Best new blog

The winner of the Best New Edublog 2012….3,148 votes

–Winner: Edutech for Teachers – Jamie Forshey (217 votes)
–Runner Up: edcetera – Rafter Blog | straight talk on ed tech (207 votes)
–Runner Up: Quests and Treks – A teacher’s journey – Daniela Bunea (157 votes)
–Runner Up: Speech Adventures – Mary Huston (123 votes)
–Runner Up:  Diane Ravitch’s Blog (111 votes)

Check out all Best New Edublog finalists and results here!

5.  Best class blog

The winner of the Best Class Edublog 2012….2,924 votes

–Winner: Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog (317 votes)
–Runner Up: Fabulous 5S (217 votes)
–Runner Up: 4KM And 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School (207 votes)
–Runner Up: 3/4C & 3/4K @ UPPS (205 votes)
–Runner Up:  3/4C @ The Junction (186 votes)

Check out all Best Class Edublog finalists and results here!

6. Best student blog

The winner of the Best student edublog 2012….1,897

-Winner: Jaden’s Awesome Blog (267 votes)
–Runner Up: MEAOW @ Josie’s Blog (190 votes)
–Runner Up: Hanna B. gradstudentSLP  (165 votes)
–Runner Up: SLP_Echo (128 votes)
–Runner Up:  GBM Corner (127 votes)

Check out all student blogs finalists and results tally here!

7.  Best Ed Tech / resource sharing blog

The winner of the Best Ed Tech / resource sharing edublog….2,924 votes

–Winner: Free Technology for Teachers – Richard Byrne (219 votes)
–Runner Up: Speech Techie – Sean J. Sweeney (212 votes)
–Runner Up: Edutopia (142 votes)
–Runner Up: Pediastaff (134 votes)
–Runner Up:  Edukwest (130 votes)

Check out all Best Ed Tech / resource sharing blog finalists and results here!

8. Best teacher blog

The winner of the Best Teacher edublog 2012….2,391votes

–Winner: speech-language-therapy.com – Caroline Bowen (236 votes)
–Runner Up: The Nerdy Teacher – Nicholas Provenzano (216 votes)
–Runner Up: Ctrl Alt Teach – Catherine “Cat” Horton Flippen (139 votes)
–Runner Up: Integrating Technology – Kathleen Morris (137 votes)
–Runner Up:  Teacher Tom (121 votes)

Check out all Best Teacher blog finalists and results here!

9. Best librarian / library blog

The winner of the Best Librarian / Library edublog 2012….1,713 votes

–Winner: Образователен блог (256 votes)
–Runner Up: Mighty Little Librarian – Tiffany Whitehead (236 votes)
–Runner Up: Bulldog Readers – Julie Hembree (214 votes)
–Runner Up: Watch. Connect. Read. – Mr. Schu (149 votes)
–Runner Up:  The Adventures of Library Girl – Jennifer LaGarde (114 votes)

Check out all Best Librarian/Library blog finalists and results here!

10. Best School Administrator or Principal blog

The winner of the Best School Administrator or Principal edublog 2012….1,530 votes

–Winner: Darcy Moore (163 votes)
–Runner Up: The Principal of Change – George Couros (143 votes)
–Runner Up: Детски клуб СОУЕЕ (134 votes)
–Runner Up: A Principal’s Reflections – Eric Sheringer (129 votes)
–Runner Up:  This and That – Jon Castelhano (73 votes)

Check out all Best School Administrator or Principal blog finalists and results here!

11.  Most influential blog post

The winner of the Most influential blog post 2012….1,766 votes

–Winner: Jaden’s Awesome Blog – Ten things I’ve learned from blogging (433 votes)
–Runner Up: Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog – November is Family Blogging Month!  (228 votes)
–Runner Up: Lexical Linguist – Nomenclature and basic functions of Twitter (AKA Twitter 101 for SLPs and AUDs (151 votes)
–Runner Up: Teach From the Heart – Evaluate Me, Please (84 votes)
–Runner Up:  Angela Maiers – 12 Things Kids Want from Their Teachers (84 votes)

Check out all Most influential blog post finalists and results here!

12.  Best individual tweeter

The winner of the Best Individual Tweeter 2012….1,559 votes

–Winner: SpeechyKeenSLP (177 votes)
–Runner Up: ictmagic (164 votes)
–Runner Up: RossMannell ( 109 votes)
–Runner Up: cybraryman1 (105 votes)
–Runner Up: fboss (103 votes)

Check out all individual tweeter finalists and results here!

13.  Best Twitter hashtag

The winner of the Best Twitter Hashttag 2012….1,733 votes

–Winner: #UnfollowBullying - student-initiated, student-led anti-bullying campaign blogs.egusd.net/ub/ from Elk Grove USD (265 votes)
–Runner Up: #slpeeps  – For speech and language professionals (226votes)
–Runner Up: #comments4kids - way for students and teachers to find blogs to comment on and to get their own posts commented on ( 166 votes)
–Runner Up: #edchat – education hashtag (163 votes)
–Runner Up: #ukedchat – education in UK (147 votes)

Check out all best hashtags finalists and results here!

14.  Best Free Web tool

The winner of the Best Free Web tool 2012….1,342 votes

–Winner: Twitter (223 votes)
–Runner Up: Glogster EDU (134 votes)
–Runner Up: DropBox ( 128 votes)
–Runner Up: Edmodo (121 votes)
–Runner Up: Pinterest (107 votes)

Check out all best free web tool finalists and results here!

15.  Best Podcasts

The winner of the Best Podcast 2012….1,409 votes

–Winner: A.T.TIPSCAST (184 votes)
–Runner Up: Infinite Thinking Machine (171 votes)
–Runner Up: Ted Talks – Education ( 163 votes)
–Runner Up: Nerdy Cast (139 votes)
–Runner Up: Geek SLP (98 votes)

Check out all best podcast finalists and results here!

16.  Best Use of Video and Media

The winner of the Best Use of Video and Media  2012….1,507 votes

–Winner: Literacy Shed (245 votes)
–Runner Up: HipHughes History (240 votes)
–Runner Up: Mr Avery’s Class ( 172 votes)
–Runner Up: Khan Academy (129 votes)
–Runner Up: Shelly Terrell (110 votes)

Check out all best use of video and media finalists and results here!

17.  Best educational wiki

The winner of the Best educational wiki  2012….2,398 votes

–Winner: English Classroom (342 votes)
–Runner Up: ICTMagic (212 votes)
–Runner Up: ENGLISH FOR ESO AND BACHILLERATO (175 votes)
–Runner Up: Digital ID (111 votes)
–Runner Up: Student Made Maths Movies (111 votes)

Check out all best educational wiki finalists and results here!

18.  Best free and Open PD

The winner of the Best free and open PD 2012….1,668 votes

–Winner: EdWeb (328 votes)
–Runner Up: Twitter Math Camp (256 votes)
–Runner Up: TeachMeets (168 votes)
–Runner Up: Simple K12′s Webinars (158 votes)
–Runner Up: EdCamps (151 votes)

Check out all best free and Open PD finalists and results here!

19.  Best Social Network for Educators

The winner of the Best Social network for educators 2012….1,704votes

–Winner: Life Pulp (252 votes)
–Runner Up: Edmodo (227 votes)
–Runner Up: Pedia Staff (216 votes)
–Runner Up: ISTE – SIGVE (97 votes)
–Runner Up: The aPLaNet Project (87 votes)

Check out all best social network for educators finalists and results here!

20.  Best Mobile App

The winner of the Best Mobile App 2012….1,574votes

–Winner: Flying Books App (218 votes)
–Runner Up: Evernote (176 votes)
–Runner Up: Night Zookeeper Drawing Torch (98 votes)
–Runner Up: DropBox (83 votes)
–Runner Up: FluencyFinder (81 votes)

Check out all best mobile app finalists and results here!

21.  Lifetime achievement

The winner of the Lifetime Acrhievenemt 2012….1,574votes

–Winner: Tim Rylands (166 votes)
–Runner Up: Jenny Zhu (157 votes)
–Runner Up: Darcy Moore (155 votes)
–Runner Up: Al Rogers (146 votes)
–Runner Up: Sir Ken Robinson (111 votes)

Check out all Life time achievement finalists and results here!

The Complete Edublog Awards Nominees 2012 list

We will spend the next few days counting up the votes and getting organized for the live ceremony.

Join us!

We will (virtually) meet in Blackboard Collaborate to announce the winners and celebrate together.

Winners that are present will have a chance to say a few words as well, so be prepared!

When: Wednesday, December 12th at 7pm EST (see in your timezone here)

Where: Click on this link here and you will be taken there. We’ll arrive around 30 minutes early to get  setup.

And stick around for the after-party to meet up with your favorite bloggers and celebrate another exciting year!

We hope to see you there!

Voting is open until 11:59 PM US Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, December the 9th!

The winners will be announced at the Edublog Awards ceremony on the 12th at 7pm EST (more to come soon).

About the Nominations

Use the links in the sidebar to see all of the finalists - those moved through to the voting round.

You can see all of the nominees in this google doc here.

Check the tabs at the bottom of the google doc to see all of the different categories. This will also show you how we ended up ranking all of the nominees.

Each year there are more and more nominations, and of increasing excellent quality, 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.

Instead, our intrepid team of judges combed through hundreds of nominated sites to whittle them down to a manageable number of shortlisted finalists for each category.

Apologies in advance if your site or nominated sites don’t make it – this was such a tough decision!

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.

For example, sites weren’t shortlisted:

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

Other factors used for shortlisting included:

• For blogs and influential posts – indicators of reader engagement (such as # of comments, bookmarking, pingbacks) and google page rank
• For Tweeters – conversation indicators (such as number of following/followers, lists 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!

Nomination Badges!

Yes! We have badges for everyone who has been nominated

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

How to Vote

Just go to the Vote Here link  in the top navigation, choose the category you want to vote in, and then who you want to vote for!  Easy!  And best of all, once you have voteed, it loads a page where you can share your vote on Twitter or Facebook!

Remember that only one vote per day per category will be counted from the same location!

This means, if your school uses one IP address, you’ll need to ask students and staff to vote from home, or only one vote will count

So we’ve decided to share a walk through of the history of the Edublog Awards because it highlights:

1. How educational technology use has changed.
2. Why the nomination, short listing and voting have changed.

Why the Edublog Awards?

The Edublog Awards was set up in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media.

The Edublog Awards:

1. Creates a fabulous resource for educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners.
2. Introduces us all to new sites that we might not have found if not for the awards process.

We still face the same issues we had back in 2004:

1. Learners and educators still face difficult issues around network restrictions, around data protection and ownership, and around commercial protectionism.
2. Hostility towards social networking sites
3. Lack of appreciation of the informal and formal educational value of user-centered applications.
4. Blocking access of learner and teacher sites for educational purposes

The Edublog awards continues to be 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.

The Nomination Categories

The Edublog Awards resources are gathered through a nomination process where anyone can nominate their favorite blogs and sites in a wide range of categories.

The categories changed, and grown, considerably over the years.

In 2004 and 2005 categories were for blogs only.

By 2006, a lot had changed in the world of educational technology.   The continuing rise and mainstreaming of easy to use online tools, and increasing access to the Internet in schools, lead to expansion of users of all ages creating and communicating online using a wider range of technologies.  With this came the first non-blog category for Best Wiki use.

And some of the categories from 2004 to 2007 are quite different from the categories we have today.

By 2007, educators were using an even wider range of online tools while facing increase in hostility towards social networking sites and widespread lack of appreciation of the informal and formal educational value of user-centered applications.

So the Edublog Awards categories were expanded to encompasses a wider range of online tools to showcase their educational value.

By 2009, an increasing number of educators networking, connecting and supporting each other on Twitter which lead to the introduction of Twitter Categories: Best Tweeter and Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion (which evolved into Best Hashtag).

By 2011,  the number of categories decreased.  The 23 categories in 2010 were too overwhelming for everyone, some of the less popular categories were combined while making way for some newer categories.

With the increasing popularity of one-to-one  tablets we introduced Best Mobile Apps as an unofficial category in 2011 which became a new category in 2012.

The Nomination Process

The nomination process has changed over the years.

Originally you could nominate by leaving a link to your favorite blogs on a comment on a post.  In 2004, with 3-19 nominations per category, and only 10 categories, this was manageable.  By 2009, the Edublog Awards had increased in popularity and the nomination process was changed to all nominations must be posted on a blog or a public website (such as a wiki or Ning).

The reason for the change to public nominations is the Edublog Awards is about gathering and showcasing resources that help educators and students.  Public nominations encourage people to reflect more on why they’re nominating particular blogs, websites or individuals.

In 2010 there was over 400 nomination posts with some posts nominating in all 23 categories while in 2011 we processed 1814 nominated sites in 18 different categories.

The Shortlisted Nominations

Whatever you do — you can’t win when it comes to the shortlisted nominations.

Shortlisting wasn’t necessary in the early years of the Edublog Awards.   Life was easy in 2005 with 60 nominations in 10 categories.  But it isn’t possible to list every single nomination in all categories when we now have some categories with over 80 different blogs, websites or individuals.

People complain if you don’t include everyone who has been nominated in a category and others complain when you compromise by making the shortlisted nomination lists include more

For example, for Best Individual Edublog:

1. There was 150 nominations received and we shortlisted 31 blogs in 2010
2. There was 150 nominations received and we shortlisted 44 blogs in 2011

The Voting Process

The voting stage is where people can vote on their favorite blogs, sites or individuals.

We’re used a range of voting tools (SurveyMonkey, PollDaddy and Formidable Pro) but the main lesson from early on in the Edublog Awards is that some people really do love their teachers TOO much

Which is why one vote per IP per category was introduced in 2007.  It’s the only way to avoid rigging, to a degree.

Voting has increased considerably from 2005 – where there was 60 edubloog nominations, in 10 categories and 3268 votes.

Below are  some voting trends data per category:

The Badges

Over the years we’ve had a range of nominated, runner up and winner badges.

Check out the changes in their looks:

Help Us Shape the Future of the Awards

We are always looking to improve the awards to make them as valuable to the community as possible.

Feel free to leave a comment below or contact us with any ideas or feedback you may have.

Here’s how we process your nominations

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

Nominating is really easy!

There is 19 different categories this year.

You can nominate your favorite for all category or just pick and choose which categories you want to nominate in …… but you can only nominate one favorite per category.

Check out these nomination posts for ideas on the different ways you can write your nomination post:

1. David Hopkin’s nomination post
2. Jayden’s nomination post
3. Larry Ferlazzo’s nomination post
4. Pernille Ripp’s Nomination post
5. Scott Newcomb’s nomination post

Below are tips to make your nominations count

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 nomination form)

If you’re nominated by someone you might want to check they remembered to send the link to their blog post via our nomination 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 nomination 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 is that time of year again!

The 2012 Edublog Awards are a go!

The Edublog Awards is a community based initiative started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media.

Working together, we create an invaluable resource of the best-of-the-best on the web!

How Does It Work?

There are 3 parts to the awards:

1. Nominations – NOW through November 26th
2. Voting – TBA
3. The Live Awards Ceremony – TBA

How To Nominate

To nominate your favorites, we’re following the same approach as the last four years, namely asking you to:

• Write a post with your nominations for the different categories on your own blog (or a website – anywhere public)
•  Send us the link to your nomination post via the form at the bottom of the Nominations Page

Here are the categories in full – nominations are open from now until Monday, November 26th!

So go nominate your favorite blogs, twitterers, community sites, videos, podcasts and more… for 2012:

• Best individual blog
• Best group blog
• Best new blog
• Best class blog
• Best student blog
• Best ed tech / resource sharing blog
• Best teacher blog
• Best library / librarian blog
• Best administrator blog
• Most influential blog post
• Best individual tweeter
• Best twitter hashtag
• Best free web tool
• Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast
• Best educational wiki
• Best open PD / unconference / webinar series
• Best educational use of a social network
• Best mobile app
• Lifetime achievement

How To Nominate

• Write a post with your nominations on your blog, link to them and link to this site
• Use the form at the bottom of the Nominations Page to send us a link to your nominations

(Yes, we put that in there twice just so it was uber clear!)

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below or use the Contact form

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

Here’s a link to the recording of the live ceremony!

For the winners, we encourage you to show off your award with one of the badges below.

And the winners are…

Check out the embedded Gooogle Doc below or Download this PDF version

Don’t forget the badges!

Please don’t forget to join us tomorrow, December 14th at 7pm EST (see it in your timezone) for the live awards ceremony.

Use this link to login to Blackboard Collaborate – come a little early to start the conversation if you’d like!

What do winners get?

Most importantly, winners will receive the recognition of their peers and the education community. We’ll provide badges to the top 5 finalists and the winners of each category after the ceremony as well to display proudly on their blogs if they choose.

We will also provide the opportunity for each winner to set-up a free Edublogs Campus site for their school or organization to use for a year! This private blog network makes it easy to create and mange blogs for students and teachers – all at your own domain.

The top five finalists in each category will be given a free year’s subscription to Edublogs Pro – pretty sweet, huh?!

With thousands of votes rolling in each day, who comes out on top is definitely still up for grabs!

Please make sure to join us on Wednesday/Thursday (see the time in your timezone here) for the live awards ceremony.

We will put a link to the Blackboard Collaborate room here on this site, on our Twitter feed, and Facebook fan page.

Winners will get a chance to give a short acceptance speech if they wish and we’ll hangout and celebrate once it is all over. This will be a great chance for you to interact with bloggers, educators, and community members – so don’t miss out! The group chat alone makes this a fun and worthwhile event!

Get your last minute votes in and hope to see you at the ceremony!

This year we’re trying an alternative option for sharing the lists by embedding a Google Doc (or you can check it out as a web page here)!

We’re still working on the information about the hashtags and web tools.  But it is quite time consuming. Please leave a comment if you have some information we can add!  Once completed we’ll be converting it into a PDF.

Hope you like and it helps!

Just click on the category name at the bottom of the spreadsheet to check out all short listed nominations in that category.