The Edublog Awards

December 5, 2011
by Sue Waters
22 Comments

The 2011 Edublog Awards – voting is now open

The nominations are up and voting is now open in the 2011 Edublog Awards!

Voting is open until 11:59 PM US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, December the 13th – and the winners will be announced at the Edublog Awards ceremony on the 14th at 7pm EST (more to come soon).

About the Nominations

Use the links in the sidebar or the “2011 Nominees!” link in the top menu to check out all of the shortlisted 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 nominations 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)
  • 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 shortlisted :)

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.

There is also a generic “vote for me badge” at the top of this post!

How to Vote

We’ve changed how you vote this year!  Now you can vote for your favorites all in the one location.

Just go to the Vote Here link  in the top navigation or vote on each nomination page by choosing the category you want to vote in, then who you want to vote for!  Easy!  And best of all once you’ve vote 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 :)

December 3, 2011
by Ronnie Burt
4 Comments

QUICK! Nominate Your Favorite Mobile App for Education

Nominations for all categories are now closed.

BUT, in a new twist for the Eddies, we’ve decided to do a quick round of nominations for your favorite mobile app while we wait for voting to begin!

These can be for student use, learning, teacher productivity, or any app that makes your life as an educator better.

All you need to do is complete the quick form below and we’ll announce the nominees when voting opens for all of the other categories.

That should happen sometime on Sunday. Just as quickly as we can get it organized and ready to go :)

We decided to do this after having such positive feedback on the new “Free Web Tool” category this year. We most likely won’t have it organized in time for voting in a normal category – but this should make for a great resource list for others once compiled.

What do you think, shall we vote on this category too? Let us know in the comments below!

Sorry – Nominations for this are now closed!

December 2, 2011
by Ronnie Burt
1 Comment

Last Call! Nominations Will Close Friday – 11:59pm EST

Just a quick note to say that nominations won’t be accepted after 11:59pm EST tomorrow (Friday the 2nd)!

if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget(’95c51305-72af-4e5a-b592-2142bc91f346′);Get the Countdown Creator Pro widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)

Make sure to get any final nominations in before the countdown makes it to zero!

Just for a sneak peek, this is by far the most nominations submitted ever.

Sometime over the weekend we will announce the shotlisted nominees and open voting at that time.

One thing we’ve been noticing, which we are extremely excited about, is the natural progression of nominees rolling in that have a specific specialty or are from a particular area. For example, ESL educators nominating fellow ESL colleagues, or speech pathologists doing the same for those in their field. It hasn’t been as obvious in years past, which really goes to show that as a community of educators, we are really starting to build our PLNs around those that match closely to what we do. This is only possible because the sheer numbers of those blogging and interacting on twitter, for example, are growing exponentially.

How wonderful that we can now collaborate with and learn from others around the globe just as easy as we can with the teacher next door!

Get those nominations in and check back over the weekend to get your vote on!

November 22, 2011
by Ronnie Burt
8 Comments

Edublog Awards News: Keeping Up With All The Nominations

Whew – we’ve processed over 400 nominations since launching with more rolling in each hour!

In case you are just tuning in – more on the nomination process and where to submit yours can be found here.

It’s fun to keep up with them as they come in, and once voting starts, we will publish them all here for you to enjoy.

For now, you can keep up with many of them with:

Twitter Search – The same used for the widget in our sidebar. You can get your own widget to embed on your blog here.

Google Blog Search – Updated with the latest blog posts that contain “Edublog Awards” somewhere in the content. An excellent way to find new blogs to follow!

Just a few thoughts – each year we come across a few posts from some that aren’t big fans of this process (see here for a recent example). We’ve also enjoyed reading posts such as Not My Edublog Awards Nominees - which puts an interesting perspective on wanting to give props to fellow PLN members, but perhaps not nominate for the awards. Please know that we welcome all feedback and are always working on ways to make this as valuable and useful process as possible to everyone. Just to throw this out there – our personal favorite part of the Edublog Awards isn’t that we crown a winner in each category, but that we:

  • Celebrate and recognize those that contribute to our personal learning
  • Create a handy list of incredible resources for the community to refer to
  • Build awareness of all of the excellent ways technology is being used in education

We can’t tell you how many times people ask us for good librarian blogs to follow, for example, and we point them to the list of the previous year’s nominees.

Keep the nominations coming – remember to get them in by Friday, December 2nd!

November 14, 2011
by Sue Waters
27 Comments

Nominations Open – The 2011 Edublog Awards are on!

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

The Edublogs Awards 2011 are a go!

The Edublog Awards is a community based incentive 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.  The best aspects include that it 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 while creating an invaluable resource of the best-of-the-best on the web!

How To Nominate

To nominate your favorites, we’re following the same approach as the last three 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

 

And we’ve made some changes to categories this year such as:

  • Some categories have been combined together (Best ed tech / resource sharing blog and Best educational use of audio / video / visual /podcast)
  • We’ve created two new categories (Best open PD / unconference / webinar series and Best free web tool)
  • Virtual worlds are encouraged to be part of the expanded “social network” category

Here are the categories in full – nominations are open from now until Friday 2 December, and voting will then be up until Tuesday 13 December and the ceremony will be rocking on Wednesday 14 December!

So go nominate your favourite blogs, twitterers, community sites, videos, podcasts and more… for 2011:

  • Best individual blog
  • Best individual tweeter
  • Best group blog
  • Best new blog
  • Best class blog
  • Best student blog
  • Best ed tech / resource sharing blog
  • Most influential blog post
  • Best twitter hashtag
  • Best teacher blog
  • Best librarian / library blog
  • Best School Administrator blog
  • 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
  • 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 :)

December 16, 2010
by Ronnie Burt
40 Comments

Announcing the 2010 Edublog Awards Winners!

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

December 13, 2010
by Ronnie Burt
3 Comments

Last chance to vote and don't miss the LIVE awards show!

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:

Get a Free v-Room

  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!

December 9, 2010
by Ronnie Burt
1 Comment

How could the Edublog Awards be improved?

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.

December 5, 2010
by Ronnie Burt
11 Comments

Voting is now open for the 2010 Edublog Awards!

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

November 30, 2010
by Sue Waters
5 Comments

Is your blog ready for first time visitors? Here's some tips to help you get ready!

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.

Example of HTML code to use in text widget

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

Example of a default about page

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

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