2010 Edublog Awards

Just wanted to thank folks for nominating my post Why Teachers Should Blog for the 2010 Edublog Award for 'Most Influential Blog Post'.

Personally, I'm not that into awards. Actually, I take that back. I do watch the Oscars telecast every year. But that's more a habit than anything else; I like production numbers, what can I say? But as far as awards themselves go, I'm relatively ambivalent.

What I like about the annual Edublogs Awards, however, is not so much the awards themselves, but rather the nomination lists. Those nomination lists serve as a compendium of a lot of good writing and a lot of the most positive activity to have occurred over the course of the year. That's not to say that the lists represent everything, nor is it to say that everything in the lists is uniformally of the highest quality. But it's nice to see what our peers have nominated -- and it's nice to see that our peers have nominated. In other words, in these busy times, it's nice to see folks actually taking the time to offer up props to edubloggers where ever they may be and what ever they may be writing.

Check out those lists. The grab-bag starts here. Take a bit of time to look over all of the blogs. It's striking to see just how much quality thinking and serious debate is going on. Kudos to all you bloggers out there.

2009 Edublog Award Nominations

The nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards were announced this morning.

Tons of amazing blogs, wikis, and networks set up by folks working every day to integrate authentic 21st century teaching and learning into the everyday classroom experiences of students.

And I'm rather humbled to have picked up three nominations myself.

I'm personally most interested in seeing what happens with the 'Most Influential Tweet Series' and the 'Best Teacher Blog' categories.

In the former, I strongly endorse #edchat.

And in the latter category, I most strongly endorse Andrew B. Watt's blog.

Those two resources have done more to solidify my own effort to keep at this edublogging thing than anything else; whether it's the lightning fast discussion pumping through an #edchat Twitter session or the philosophical cool of Watt's most reflective posts, I am regularly reminded why I blog.

I blog because we are living in special times and we have a special task before us: to draw up and implement a fresh concept of education for a new century in which we are all but a keystroke away.

My own blog was nominated for three awards (listed below), and though in general (at least from a personal point of view) I tend to think awards are a silly thing, I'd nonetheless be honored if you had the inclination and found the time to vote for this blog (especially as the prizes are great new resources I could use both with my kids and to create closer connections and deeper interaction with all of you as well).

More importantly, I hope that the fact that this blog was included in the nominations means that folks are getting something worthwhile out of the writing and discussion here.

That's all a blogger can really hope for.

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TP was nominated for:

Best New Blog

Best Resource Sharing Blog

Most Influential Blogpost of 2009 (for Top Eleven Things All Teachers Must Know About Technology)