In blogging for education reform, Greta Sandler and I have collaborated together on an initiative we believe represents what education needs, bloggers for education! The project is Blog 4 Edu (The Blogging for Education project), a Twitter account (@Blog4Edu), wiki, and Facebook page to help support bloggers, blogging projects, and blogging challenges. Our vision is to persuade as many educational stakeholders worldwide to blog as possible.

Why Blog 4 Edu?

We suggest that blogging and social media are two of the main components of improving education worldwide. This won’t fix everything in education but through blogging we can open the conversation to the possibilities. When we blog we open the conversation to all education stakeholders (the public, parents, students, administrators, and educators). We automatically get an audience for our message even if it initially consists of one. Eventually, we share our message and reach someone who joins the conversation of how to improve education worldwide. This conversation continues for as long as we participate in the conversation.

Supporting Each Other

Teachers can choose to make a difference in their classrooms each day so why don’t many choose to inspire a passion for learning within their students? Many teachers don’t feel supported. Somewhere along the way their vision of reaching their students became blurred by the restraints of standardized tests, burdens from administration, parental complaints, and lack of support. Several educators also don’t reflect or run ideas with other educators about improving their practice. We lose so many great teachers because we fail to support them. After they lose their initial vision they also begin to lose their passion.

Blogging can be difficult at first, so we decided to start Blog 4 Edu to support, encourage and inspire edubloggers. Blog 4 Edu is meant to provide that support through commenting, sharing blogging resources, inspiring posting through blogging challenges, and providing bloggers with several projects to collaborate on. We won’t be initiating these projects. Instead, we will be sharing the ones many educators have already started and hope to inspire a collaborative spirit and enthusiasm for participating. Often educators come up with innovative ideas that die because of a lack of support and participation. With over 50,000 educators in our various social networks, there are plenty of participants but the word just doesn’t get spread. We hope to help spread that word.

Spreading the Word

Through blogging students and teachers exemplify what works in education. Blogging is a great way to share what is happening in every classroom. Transparency is very important to education transformation. The general public and parents need to see what we are doing in our classrooms. Through blogs we can share videos, share why we believe in our instructional practices, and share our humanity. We share our successes and failures and for parents and the public to read our raw reflections reminds them we are not superheroes, we are passionate individuals wanting to improve the world by inspiring children to love to learn. Transformation starts in the classroom but builds through the spreading of our message. Blogging is a great way to share what is happening in every classroom. Moreover, educators can also get other educational stakeholders on board by sharing their successes. Let’s spread the word and passion and make it contagious.

Reflection

Every passionate teacher should be a lifelong learner. Learning and reflecting will inspire and motivate teachers. Blogging is a wonderful tool for educators to reflect on their practices and grow professionally and personally. Through reflection we are able to improve on our instructional methods.

Ending Thoughts

We both believe that something must be done. We can’t just sit down and wait for other people to do something. We decided the way to best exemplify education transformation was through collaborating on this blog post and on this project. By the way, Greta Sandler is located in Argentina and I am located in Germany. We met on Twitter about 4 months ago and came up with Blog 4 Edu yesterday. This is the power of collaboration! This is how we believe transformation will happen!

Find out more about this exciting project:

• Blog 4 Edu Wiki
• Twitter account (@Blog4Edu)
• Blog 4 Edu Facebook page

This post has been cross-posted by Greta Sandler at About a Teacher!

Challenge:

Follow the blogs on the @Blog4Edu account or join in one of the projects!

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What do you believe will drive education transformation?

Part of the series: The 30 Goals Challenge, Goal 4: Support a New Blogger

Karenne Sylvester, a prolific blogger, offers some advice for new and established bloggers….

With over 70,000,000 blogs written weekly – thousands of which are written by fellow educators – it is actually a good idea today to stop, take stock and look deeply look into why some of these blogs have become internationally popular sites, visited by hundreds of thousands of readers, daily, and why some of them have never got beyond a handful of friends, family members and colleagues visiting.

What are the intrinsic qualities which distinguish a great edu-blogger from a hobbyist?

1. Great edu-bloggers know why they blog

A lot of new bloggers kick off with an almost mandatory post, starting off somewhat hesitantly, with a cry out to the universe of oh, what shall I write about? (I did too) however the what is actually not as important as the why.

Bloggers don’t generally become successful until they have a relatively clear picture in their minds about their reasons for becoming a part of and participating in the vast blogopshere.

Reasons drive passion, you see.

Let’s be immediately clear, if it’s not already obvious to our readers and those who would be bloggers, real edu-blogging is real work.

For the vast majority of us, this activity provides no (or virtually no) income and there is a steep learning curve to climb while we learn all the ins and outs and adopt the jargon as part of our daily lives – and while it might seem, at times, really quite crazy to put this much effort into doing something which does not pay: we are united through our passion for the page.

Ask friends what drives them to get up in the mornings and they may not know but ask a trainer why she travels around the world, educating others, sharing her skills – her answers may vary but mostly you’ll hear:

I love what I do.

Ask a teacher working in a tough inner-city school how they have managed to stay in the classroom and they’ll shrug shoulders saying “dunno” or perhaps they’ll smile shyly with a little glint in their eyes, admitting that it’s because they know that they are inspiring others to reach their own potential.

And so it is with edu-blogging. It is passion which brings us here, lone writers hacking at our pages, honing our craft, very often for years. Conversely, it is the loss of this meaning that leads some of us to eventually quit, to let our blogs die peacefully.

Yet when we stay, when we push through the beginning days of low readership and poorly crafted posts, we grow.

Ask successful edu-bloggers how they have managed to stay on their pages: they know. Ask their readers why their blogs are read in large numbers and they will tell you – it’s because she’s just so motivated, she makes me want to be passionate about my teaching too…

Passion, it is delicious. Passion, it is the most contagious of all emotions out there.

It is addictive. Elusive and tricky to describe (and even a dirty word in some circles) but whenever you see it, whenever you find it, you want it. It’s the sheer smell of happiness – the quality we all want to have and it is this that gets readers following, readers turning into bloggers themselves, participating in conversations and coming back to the page to read, to write, to grow, to share even more.

Where does it comes from?

Here are some of the reasons why your fellow edu-bloggers blog with passion (a list without judgment or prejudice for no blogian should decree why another blogian participates in the ‘sphere):

• to develop their creativity and test out ideas
• to share lessons plans and ideas with other teachers and get feedback
• to provide one’s own students with easy links to common errors
• to give students a permanent space online to find out their homework
• to share what’s going on in the classroom with parents and the broader community
• to participate and aid the development of democracy in education
• to unite other teachers, globally
• to keep in touch with those they have trained in the past/ will train in the future
• to create a space where they can reflect on their own learning as they develop professionally
• for the discipline of writing regularly
• to hone and tighten their writing skills
• because blogging will eventually replace the paper based notebook and it’s a good idea to get in the practice now – a skill which can be shared with students
• to raise their own and others professional profiles
• to sell a book(s) they’ve written in the past or books they’ll be selling in the future
• to think through, out loud, ideas for new books and get feedback
• to have somewhere to put the book submission that was turned down, may as well put it up for free
• to be hired to eventually write a book which is based on themes covered in one’s blog
• to create an e-portfolio of their knowledge and skills
• to promote their workshops and/or get hired to do others
• to be hired by an e-consultancy business
• to be considered as an expert in edtech
• to get a job as teacher trainer-senior teacher-ICT specialist
• to get a job as a educational company’s blogger
• to make side-cash by selling other people’s products or advertising
• to have the thrill of having thousands of google hits attached to one’s name
• to join the party: everyone else is blogging, might as well too!

Why are you?

No matter the multiplutide of reasons your fellow bloggers may blog, knowing your own reason(s) will help you, like all of the great edu-bloggers to find the willpower to consistently come back to the page.

And if you’re not blogging yet but you are considering it, why?

2. Great edu-bloggers know who they are writing for.

Although a handful make the following type of statement and get away with it:

“I am going to Blog about whatever I Freakin’ feel like Blogging about!!!!!!! Just read and Enjoy…”

Most do not.

The underlying principle uniting all great edu-bloggers is that they understand that the blog they write is not only about what they feel or what they think – a web log is not a diary – instead they keep their audience’s needs central and in focus.

Those who insist on writing on whatever topic pops into their heads, randomly, spontaneously, generally do not ever generate high readership: educators are very busy, unique individuals themselves and if they find this happening over a long period of time, basically articles of only blog-babble or blogcandy, or worse, topics they have already read thousands of times elsewhere, they stop returning.

The most successful bloggers develop a keen sense of what their audience likes reading and write articles aimed at this specific niche, sub-niche or even to a broader field – following trends in the media, classrooms and staff rooms and they learn how to equate these discussions into their own posts; they focus on stories that they know their fellow teachers will be really interested in, saving personal anecdotes of non-related to educational issues for their personal inner circles on Facebook Notes: they don’t assume that educators, parents and students all want to read the same articles, separating these into different blogs; they provide new, unique voices rather than copy popular blogs; they offer a service which really helps their readers and they take themselves, as much as possible, completely out of the ego-equation.

Do you want to be a great edu-blogger?

Ask yourself often:

• Who am I writing for?
• Where are these teachers based?
• What do they teach?
• What are their primary concerns?
• What are they interested in reading more about?
• How can I serve them better?

image credit

Mike Licht, Notions Capital.com: Young woman blogging, after Marie-Denise Villers

(c) KarenneJoySylvester, 2010

This post is part of a new series: Thoughts on Edu-blogging. For part 2 of this particular article, please visit Janet Bianchini’s blog!

Karenne is an ELT edu-blogger, a ESP:IT teacher, EdTech teacher-trainer and materials writer, originally from Grenada in the Caribbean. She currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany and blogs at Kalinago English and BusinessEnglish~5mins. Find her on Twitter as @kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:
Try Karenne’s tips!

Download your free copy of The 30 Goals Challenge: Join the Movement e-book!

Don’t forget to leave a comment that you accomplished this goal using the hashtag #30Goals!

Submit a guest post for The 30 Goals Challenge Series!

Part of the series: The 30 Goals Challenge, Goal 9: Be a Guest Blogger

Image courtesy of Photobucket butterfly pictures

So many butterflies were fluttering around frantically in my stomach when I did my first guest post last year. As a relatively newbie blogger, I was so nervous, I couldn’t sleep the night before. It was a big stage.  I was at the right place and at the right time when I saw the opportunity via a tweet to do a guest post for Richard Byrne’s Free Technology for Teachers blog. I remember feeling very excited when I saw The Voyage of Discovery had published ok, and it really made my day.  Since then I have done quite a few more guest posts, including this one here for Shelly on the subject of Phrasal Verbs, and I  have not felt as nervous as that very first time. Those butterflies have now developed powerful wings to make them soar as high as they want to go.

The Impact of Goal Challenge 9: Be a Guest Blogger

You may be thinking, “Ok, you’ve done a few guest posts already, including one for Teacher Reboot Camp, so how could this be a new challenge for you? Well, when I read Shelly’s 30 Goals Challenge for Goal number 9 – Be a Guest Blogger, it inspired me to be even more pro-active and embrace any opportunity that I came across. The words that touched me were  “One of my long-term goals is to post more guest pieces on other websites or blogs.  I love having my writings published on other websites….” That really made me reflect, and I realised that I felt exactly the same way, but earlier this year, I wasn’t really pushing myself to achieve this goal more fully.

In the Flow

When I recently saw a tweet from OUP ELT Global blog asking for guest bloggers, I had Shelly’s motivational words in mind when I immediately and without hesitating, actually volunteered to go for it.  Up until then, I had only been invited personally to do a guest post by members of my  PLN that I had good social contact with.   “Renew the Passion and Go with the Flow” was a post I wrote to help teachers experiencing a loss of flow in their teaching.  It was a way for me to share my thoughts and hopefully impart some helpful advice and re-ignite the flow.

At the same time by sheer coincidence, a member of my PLN, Eva Buyuksimkesyan from A Journey in TEFL, asked me if I would like to do a guest post for her.  The result is The A-Z Files.  Again, my confidence had grown by then, and I saw it as a great way to share some more tips.

Below is a mind map I created with bubbl.us.  It shows the reasons why I think being a guest blogger is a great goal to achieve. Please press on the image for a bigger view.

It’s All in the Timing

Well, I can’t really think of any specific reason why being a guest blogger is not a good thing for you!  Maybe, the timing has to be right and that is the only drawback, as far as I can see.  You need to devote enough time to ensure that what you write is of a high standard.  My motto is that I would only publish a guest post if I would also publish it on my blog. If you are really too busy to contemplate doing a guest post, and you don’t want to offend by saying no outright to an invitation, then just explain and make a note in your diary to  find some time to write the post at a later date.  Make sure you really want to contribute by asking yourself the question, as Larry Ferlazzo suggests here, before you decide on a goal. I am sure the blogger who invited you will not be offended by your honesty and will look forward to your contribution at a later date.

My Top Tips

• Share your knowledge with your PLN by accepting any invitations to be a guest blogger
• Do not be afraid to reply to requests for guest authors outside of your PLN
• Do not be shy to offer to do a guest post on a related subject matter
• Be confident in your abilities
• Write about the particular subject matter that you are passionate about
• Research your topic matter as thoroughly as you can
• Enjoy the different environment
• Learn about a different blogging tool if it is not the same as yours
• Enjoy the experience
• The time is NOW!

Photo courtesy of KRB, then made into my own motivational poster by using bighugelabs.com

All Credit Due

I’d like to thank Shelly very much for creating such a wonderful set of 30 goals, which can be realistically achieved if you really, really set your mind to them. Shelly continues to surprise me with her amazing and boundless enthusiasm, her great acts of kindness and altruistic endeavours to help so many people. I learn so much from her truly unique sense of motivational powers. The makebeliefscomix below says it all. Please click on the image for a clearer view.

————————————————————-

Janet Bianchini (@janetbianchini) has been an EFL teacher for over three decades.  She still loves teaching and she is enjoying the challenge of learning more about new technologies and how to integrate them into her lessons. She writes a blog called Janet’s Abruzzo Edublog.  When she is not writing her blog, studying, editing or teaching, she loves to spend time in her rather wild garden with her menagerie in tow.

Challenge:
Submit your own guest post to this blog when you complete one of the goals or to another blog.

Download your free copy of The 30 Goals Challenge: Join the Movement e-book!

Don’t forget to leave a comment that you accomplished this goal using the hashtag #30Goals!

Flickr image by alamodestuff

Darren Elliot in his blog, The Lives of Teachers, challenged bloggers to go through the archives of some of their favorite bloggers. I am calling this a blogging challenge versus homework. Darren’s fantastic idea is optional and challenges bloggers. Here are some guidelines if you would like to participate!

1. Have a look through the archives of your favorite bloggers by looking at the sidebar, clicking a tag or category, or searching for keywords in a search box.
2. Leave a comment.
3. Link to it on your blog, or tweet it using the hashtag #hiddengems, which was created by Mike Harrison.

Here are the blogs I chose to explore in 2 categories along with quotes from their posts.

English Language Teaching Blogs

In Henrick Oprea’s blog, Doing Some Thinking, he questions Is One Born a Teacher? I enjoy the thought-provoking posts on this blog and this one definitely makes you reflect on why you entered the profession. I enjoyed this reflection from the post:

Maybe there is such a thing as people who are cut out to be teachers and will be extremely successful at it with little effort. Others may be just as successful, but will have to work a bit harder at it. It may come across as cliché, but I believe that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Perhaps you will not be the most famous person who’s ever worked in your area, but you may definitely be great at it – whatever this it may be.

I love to visit Sue Lyon-Jones’ blog, The PLN Staff Lounge, because I get the comfort I need. Her posts make you really feel like you are in a staff lounge among your peers who empathize with the quirks of our profession. In her post, Murphy’s Law of TEFL, I especially enjoyed these:

If you plan to use the Internet during your lesson, the network will go down 30 seconds after the students have logged on and remain down for the rest of the session.
If you plan to teach a session using Twitter, you will end up delivering a 3 hour lesson on The Story of the Fail Whale.
Whatever level of English your learners are at, the phrase “please do not poke the LCD screens” will go completely over their heads.

In Anne Hodgson’s blog, The Island Weekly, she not only regularly publishes great posts, but she includes interesting podcasts and videos as well. I enjoyed this post and podcast, Which Thinker Taught You to Think?, where she reflects:

I don’t pretend to be a great thinker. Going to college didn’t go to my head, but the experience did teach me to use it. So I’d like to ask you: Which thinker taught you to think? For me, one of the most important thinkers was Jürgen Habermas, who turned 80 last Thursday. His belief in our communicative competence and his theory of communicative reason influenced the way I think and live.

In Eva Buyuksimkesyan‘s blog, A Journey in TEFL, she writes a beautiful post about reflection, failure, and student expectations, entitled, The Power of Feedback. I enjoy Eva’s honesty in her posts. I enjoyed this reflection from her post:

The end of the term was near and they were too tired as they studied for lots of exams and their projects and they were complaining that the teachers and parents were too expectant. That day I asked them to write an article about what I expect from a student instead of writing a feedback. I told them that way I would be able to understand if I was too expectant or not.

In Nicky Hockly’s blog, The E-Moderation Station, I enjoy the technology activities and pedagogy. In this post, Activities for Online Courses: The Beginning, she describes in depth how to have students create profiles using Glogster. I enjoyed this reflection from her post:

Like any good play, an online course has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Okay, admittedly some good plays – like Waiting for Godot – have none of the above, but bear with me on this. Some courses are short one-act plays,  and some are full-length Shakespearean dramas – especially when real-life tragedy does unfortunately intervene, and participants are forced to withdraw because of bereavement or illness.

Education Blogs

In Mary Beth Hertz’s blog, The Philly Teacher, she reflects on the way education is radically changing in scary ways in her post, The Times Are A-Changing. Mary Beth shows true passion in her posts for a better education system. I enjoyed this reflection from her post:

it seems everyone in education (or those with no hand in it) have something to say or do about education.
It’s scary as hell.

I enjoy the technology reflections and updates from Edbuzz.org. In this post, A Few of My Favorite TED Talks for Educators, I enjoyed this reflection:

“With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father’s wisdom.”

I enjoy the passionate posts in Chad Sansing ‘s blog, Classroots. In this post, Republics of Change, he has educators question what they want to accomplish to be better educators. I enjoyed this reflection from his post:

Look back at what you’ve accomplished. Look ahead to what you want to accomplish. Look in all of your work for your best self. How does that teacher do it? How does that teacher plan such authentic, engaging work? How does that teacher spark a smile on the face of that student? How does that teacher communicate with parents and convince administrators that new ideas will work?

I am still working on commenting on all these great blogs and I wanted to include many more.

Challenge:

Look through some of your favorite blogs archives to see what #hiddengems you may have missed!

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

Part of the Cool Sites series

Perhaps your students are like mine and are not quite ready to make the leap to begin blogging. I work with very young language learners and adult language learners. Many of my adult learners will not put the effort into blogging but that doesn’t mean they will not try learning from a blog. I have found several valuable blogs for my students to learn English. Daily they can receive a lesson through e-mail or through RSS readers. Last semester I decided to teach my students how to learn with blogs.

This was how the first lesson plan went:

• We were learning about travel in America, therefore I had my students read Shonah Wraith’s post, Big, Bigger, BIGGEST.
• I asked students to leave comments on Shonah’s post.
• Shonah did a great job of responding to my student’s questions and comments. Scroll down to the end of the post to see the fantastic results!
• You can do the same lesson in any subject by telling a blogger ahead of time that your students will visit the blog and asking the blogger to answer the students’ questions.

2nd Phase: Video Tutorials

In the first phase, my students became familiar with the process and realized the amount of learning they could receive through interacting with blogs. Therefore, my next goal was to get my students to subscribe to the blogs. In order to teach them how to do this I made a video tutorial on how to subscribe to blogs with e-mail and get a lesson in their inbox regularly.

I shared this video so that students could also subscribe by Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

List of Blogs

I also shared a list of blogs the students could subscribe to. I told my students to explore the various blogs and subscribe to the ones that best appealed to their learning styles and interests. Each of the blogs had different aspects. Some had audio, others had video, and some had written words. I put these links in my wiki for my adult students to explore. Below are the English lesson blogs I suggested sorted by e-mail subscriptions and RSS subscriptions:

Blogs with e-mail/RSS subscriptions:

• Daily English Activities
• The English Blog
• Perfect English Grammar
• Helping You Learn English
• Business English Pod
• Business Spotlight
• A Clil to Climb
• The English Web
• Dalango
• ESL Video

Blogs with RSS subscriptions only:

• Miss Shonah’s Blog
• The Island Weekly
• Ego 4 U
• Breaking News English
• Improving English Language Skills
• Free English Lessons

Challenge:

Have your students learn English by interacting on blogs. Gather a list of blogs in your subject area for students to explore.

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What are your favorite blogs in your subject area (math, history, science, English, etc.)? You can have your students even interact on their own blogs?

Do you want to add more blogs to my student list?

Recently, I did a technology training workshop via Skype to teachers in Michigan. I have to thank Dave Sapp, a wonderful technology specialist, for this opportunity. I am located in Germany so I really enjoy doing Skype training with people from all over the world. The topic was PLNs. I began by directing each of the participants to look at each other, because these were already members of their Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), because these are the educators they go to for support, training, resources, and support! I was happy to see the teachers hug themselves and show appreciation to each other when I spoke these words.

Where Do We Begin?

Most of us who have seen the benefits of social media and PLNs want other educators to participate. I believe that sharing at the local level is where we should begin. If the educators at our school are already collaborating with each other and sharing resources then the leap to sharing on social media is not that huge. Primarily, the teachers have already seen the benefits of having a PLN at the school. For this reason, I love Alice Ayel’s recent idea to start a teacher club at her school for sharing resources. Also, I love how Dave Sapp has his own teachers in the school provide training during professional development days. These are fantastic ways to support the ideas of PLNs.

Why Should This be the Goal?

I don’t need to convince you of the power of PLNs if you already use social media. However, I can tell you a little bit about my growth. Did you know that I’ve been blogging and using Twitter for less than a year? I really started using Twitter in May. Since then, I started blogging and now my blog is up for the different Edublog Awards I’ve listed in the side bar. I cannot thank you enough for the nominations! Moreover, I have participated in online and face-to-face conferences. I have met other PLN members in Berlin, France, Poland, and LA. Before my Twitter birthday comes up, I plan on meeting many more of you. I have collaborated with schools all over the world and have had some of you be so fantastic as to share your experiences on my blog. Please look on the sidebar to read stories from guest bloggers from all over the world! I have been able to converse with Alfie Kohn through Edchat. How amazing is this?! I wake up every day excited to be part of this amazing conversation with my PLN, you! A little less than a year ago I was not connected to any of you and neither were my students. Now, my students and I learn from you daily. Many of you are like my additional family and I am humbled that you have supported me. In fact, you have made some of my family members believe in the power of PLNs. They no longer think my Twittering or blogging is a big joke!

Our Difficult Jobs

Most importantly, you have rekindled my passion for continuous learning, growth, and self-reflection. As educators we have very tough jobs. We are responsible for the learning of society. What we do impacts students’ daily lives and futures. We are not paid enough and never appreciated enough. We do not have all the answers to the myriad of situations we face daily, such as students with learning disabilities, classes that lack resources, mixed ability classes, culture issues, security issues, poverty, and more. None of us were trained to handle all these obstacles which often coincide. Therefore, collaboration and resource sharing is the key. If every teacher had a PLN to turn to, then every teacher would have their own community working to solve these tough issues. If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy reading these posts:

• Alice Ayel’s Bubble Feeling
• Arjana Blazic’s I Need This
• Karenne Sylvester’s Thnx 4 Your RTs
• Marisa Constantinide’s A Note of Thanks!

Challenge:

Set some plans for helping educators in your community become part of a PLN!

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

Which ways have you encouraged resource sharing among the educators at your school?

My blog is relatively new and has become much more than I ever would have expected. I owe this to the various people and organizations I am nominating below for the Edublogs 2009 awards! I have learned by their examples. My knowledge as well as my passion for learning and collaboration I owe to them. Several others not on this list have also been influential.

My Nominations

Best individual blog- Kalinago English, Karenne Sylvester’s blog, has everything a blog needs from passionate posts to technology tips to controversial stances against the injustices in education! I’d also like to nominate Terry Freedman’s ICT in Education blog. He continues to write thought-provoking posts and provides useful tips for educators through his blog and other multimedia channels.

Best individual tweeter- Steven Anderson, @web20classroom, is an incredible representative of what an educator on Twitter should be. He is a close friend. He really cares about education and shares resources as well as helps as many educators through Skype. He does this in addition to working as the technology specialist for 19 schools. @Tomwhitby continues to inspire thought-provoking conversations which proves the 140 character limit is not limiting at all!

Best group blog- The Educator Royal’s Treatment, which is managed by Ken Royal, is a daily stop for me! I anticipate all the posts and have really had some great moments reading the various posts!

Best new blog- Ken Wilson has written one of the most compelling blogs that often reads like a novel. I would also like to include Marisa Constantinide’s blog, which is rich with teaching instruction advice and Tamas Lorincz’s blog which is thought-provoking and makes the educator deeply self-reflect.

Best class blog- Gelincik Grubu is a kindergarten class blog created by teachers in Turkey. They showcase the incredible work the children do which is an inspiration!

Best student blog- Adora Svitak is a 12 year-old prodigy who writes thought-provoking pieces such as how she feels befriending her principal on Facebook to poetry!

Best resource sharing blog-Several of my original posts began with links from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. Rarely do I go a week without referring to a link within a post I found through Larry! I would also like to include Ozge Karaoglu’s blog, which has become a wonderful source of information to various Web 2.0 tools! Cybraryman also has a great website for nearly every subject imaginable.

Most influential blog post- Burcu Akyol has created one of the most influential blog series for educator’s professional development, Spread Your Knowledge. The Spread Your Knowledge series featured posts written from leading experts. Topics covered include getting published, how to tweet, creating a PRESTO, doing a presentation, blogging, and creating your own educational materials. I would also like to include the post by Scott Mcleod about Leadership Day 2009 which inspired several bloggers globally to blog about effective technology practices on July 12th.

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion- #Edchat is a discussion which has included over 400 educators, parents, student teachers, and administrators. Through #edchat various educators were able to debate a topic with the incredible education author, Alfie Kohn. I am honored to collaborate on this great project with Tom Whitby and Steven Anderson. I would also include #teachertuesday which is managed by TheEngTeacher who also manages to feed teachers’ blogs on Twitter.

Best teacher blog- Chickensaltash not only shares various resources in his blog, but he also shares how his students collaborate with other schools around the world. Chickensaltash’s work with Cool Earth is inspiring to educators. His work with schools in Peru and his travels as an educator in the rainforest earned him a nomination for the education Oscar’s.

Best librarian / library blog-Library Tech Musings by Gwyneth A. Jones is a treasure trove of web 2.0 tools and technologies for libraries. The blog is also highly visual.

Best educational tech support blog- If I need to know how to use a specific technology I visit David Kapular’s blog, Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyberhero. David has also published 6 free e-books to explain the various resources in his blog and has developed a wiki dedicated to these materials.

Best elearning blog- Elearning Learning has each of my favorite elearning blogs in one spot.

Best educational use of audio- Breaking News English by Sean Banville has over 1o00 audio files to support over 1000 current events. Each audio file is relevant, interesting, has supportive text, and exercises to accompany it! Moreover, Sean has pair activities for each lesson and even asks educators what news they would like him to do an audio file and lesson for!

Best educational use of video / visual- Russell Stannard has created several teacher training videos on various websites and nearly every web 2.o tool imaginable! TEFLClips by Jamie Keddie hosts various videos and accompanying lesson plans.

Best educational wiki- Ozge Karaoglu’s wiki reviews several web 2.0 tools in depth, provides excellent uses of Glogster, and showcases the incredible ways she uses web 2.0 tools with children.

Best educational use of a social networking service- The Educator PLN ning was created by Tom Whitby and continues to be one of my favorite places to travel daily to mingle with over 1500 educators! Additionally, Steve Hargadon’s Classroom 2.0 ning is a thriving community of nearly 35,ooo educators.

Best educational use of a virtual world- Edunation, which is currently run by The Consultants-E, is the place educators go to teach lessons, create educational materials, and attend conferences in Second Life. This mass of three virtual islands has been a safe haven for educators and free for all to use. It is also an invaluable source of professional development.

Lifetime achievement- Sue Waters has been the most influential individual in helping me develop my blog this year! All her websites, wikis, blogs, webinars, individual help, and virtual chocolates have helped make me pass the 5 month blogger mark!

New Categories

In the spirit of writing in nominations and candidates, I’m including the following categories and hope these will be accepted or considered as categories for next year. I hope giving awards for these categories will inspire more educational projects in these areas:

Best Blog Series- my nomination is for Burcu Akyol’s Spread Your Knowledge series.

Best Virtual Conference- Heike Philp’s Virtual Round Table Conference had over 400 participants worldwide, 49 guest speakers, and brought together some of the best educational panels and experts for free! Educators even won over 3000 Euros worth of prizes and the entire conference took place online!

Best Example of an Educator Digital Portfolio- Ozge Karaoglu once again has shown what an excellent educator portfolio should look like. I encourage you to read her series on creating your own digital portfolio.

Best Classroom Collaboration Project- Arjana’s high school students from Croatia have made a deep connection with Monika Hardy’s students in Colorado. They even celebrated Thanksgiving together and collaborate frequently on a ning.

Best Webinar- Jo Hart, Phil Hart, Sue Waters, and Stony River bring us great webinars about various educational topics week after week for free! They deserve more than virtual chocolates. How about a virtual award?

Best Blog Carnival- Karenne Sylvester had an impressive blog carnival which included a slideshow of blogs and a poll. The Edge of Education carnival hosted by We Teach, We Learn  was one of my favorites as well with quotes from each blog!

Absolute Best Readers in the World- You!

Challenge:

Make your Edublog Awards Nominations! Which sites and blogs have been influential for you this year?

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Every week, I share my favorite websites! My goal is to post this weekly series regularly on Saturdays so you can test these tools out. However, you can get access to these fantastic websites as soon as I find them by connecting with me on Google reader!

Open Source Cinema

Open Source Cinema allows the user to join or propose video projects.  You can remix media on your own computer and other people’s media from YouTube and Flickr.  You can easily create your own video project for your students on any theme and have them each contribute images, music, and videos. Another way you can use this website is to show one of the thought-provoking video projects like the one below and have your students debate the issues or respond in a journal. Some of the videos could act as case studies. The video below describes the purpose of the website and provides some history behind creative commons! This website is in beta and I did find some bugs, but overall I think this website offers several learning opportunities. This website was shared by my friend Sue Lyon-Jones!

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a fantastic free animation tool! There are several  characters, backgrounds, music, voices, and effects to choose from. You will have to sign-up. The tool is very simple to use and very creative videos can be made with dialogue, sound, and various voices. You can have students make animation movies or you can make one to introduce a lesson. Below is an example of what a finished animation looks like! I chose this animation, because it is a tutorial, well made, and illustrates some of the features. I recommend you check out the rest of Mojochi’s animation videos, which can be used for educational purposes. Although the website is free, please note that you will have a limited selection. However, when you create various animations you can earn points for more features.

GoAnimate.com: The Advanced Zoom Tutorial by Mojochi

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

WordOff: Blogging Tool

If you are a blogger you know one of the faux pas is copying and pasting posts from Word. The reason you should never do this is because you will have a lot of html to fix. However, when you invite guest bloggers they sometimes will send you Word documents. You now can easily clean the added html in Word documents with WordOff! Just copy and paste the html of the post you need cleaned up and the website will:

• remove attributes for all elements including <span> and <div> tags
• keep <a> tags for html and images
• reduce consecutive line breaks to two

Lingt Webtools for Languages

You really must check out Lingt, which was introduced to me by Melissa Techman. With the various tools you can quickly create oral exams, incorporate video and images to create media activities, offer specific feedback to students, track individual improvement, and archive all assignments! You get a url easily accessible to students and the public if you want to share your materials. For a great example, look at this Japanese dialogue lesson.

Even More Cool Links

• For a list of cool websites, check out Ozge Karaoglu’s series, Faves of the Week!
• If you love animation tools, please check out the various reviews by David Kapular in his Technology Tidbits blog!

Challenge:

Use one of the tools! Leave a comment if you found the tip useful or if you noticed a problem with the tool!

You may want to subscribe to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

I found several cool educational tools from Ziipa! My goal is to post this weekly series regularly on Saturdays so you can test these tools out. However, you can get access to these fantastic websites as soon as I find them by connecting with me on Google reader!

PicApp Images

I found the picture above on PicApp, which allows any blogger to find quality pics and embed them easily! I took only a minute to select, edit, and embed the image. The best part is that you do not have to attribute the picture, which saves bloggers time. Moreover, you can use the editing tools on the website and receive the embed code to copy and paste. The website uses the small gallery icon to advertise, which is hardly noticeable. The majority of the images are high quality, but I recommend choosing the creative option versus the editorial to save even more time.

DocVerse: Collaborate on MS Office Documents

Ever want to collaborate on a PowerPoint, Excel, or Word document? Now you can for free with DocVerse. Currently, you can only download on a Windows system, but you can share the link to the document with a Mac user. There are more cool features, such as commenting and the ability to share with non-Office users. I suggest giving this a software a try!

Sketchcast: Draw

Have your students draw, add text, and use voice with Sketchcast!  You have to register, but the service is free. I wish the site would add an easy search engine and the site seems to go down at times and is temperamental with a Mac. When the tool works, it is great for all students and English language learners. Students can draw in several different colors, add text, narrate the drawing, and embed it into a wiki or blog! One way to use Sketchcast is to have students create a sketch and use adjectives to help another student guess what the object is.

Blurtt: Send Postcards!

Do you have your students write and mail letters to the White House or a celebrity like Oprah? If you do, then you will love Blurtt, which allows the user to mail a postcard made online directly to politicians, movie stars, family, or friends for a very low fee. You can have the students create postcards for Obama congratulating him on his Nobel Peace Prize and directly mail them for a low cost. Use this with caution, though, because I found a few postcards that had inappropriate writing.

Google Maps + Flickr= MapFlickr

Use MapFlickr to create your own Google Map with pictures from your Flickr account. I can see students using this to visually show trips they took or they can mark all the places they have lived. All students can mark the places they have been on one map and post this on a wiki!

Cameroid: Take Silly Photos

If you have a webcam on your school computers, then your students can take silly photos with Cameroid. The service is very easy to use with several backdrops, frames, and effects.

Even More Cool Links

For more great finds, please visit Ozge Karaoglu’s Faves of the Week series!

Challenge:

Use one of the tools! Leave a comment if you found the tip useful!

You may want to subscribe to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

Recently, in our morning #Edchat discussion, we discussed how to prevent social media burn-out. Those who participated in the discussion offered several tips on time management and skills to teach students involving social media. Click on the mindmapping link to view some of my favorite tweets from the discussion. You can make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around.

Which Social Media Tools Should we Use?

During the discussion we also discussed which social media tools to use with students and to recommend to teachers for developing their Personal Learning Network (PLN). Click on the mindmapping link to add to your favorite tools to the list and include a helpful link that describes best practices with that social media tool.

Special thanks to the educators who participated in the discussion and were featured in this post! Add them to your PLN by using Russel Tarr‘s mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

bonnycastle, pcaggia, esolcourses, tearoof, tipsbytony, digin4ed, eduinnovation, tipsbytony, distance_edu, jgvanides, birdfish, onteaching, nancydevine, tomwhitby, shellterrell

Click on the link to find out how you can be part of the #Edchat movement, a collaboration between Tom Whitby, Steven Anderson, and me (ShellTerrell).

Challenge:

Make additions to the Mindmap! You may need to send me your e-mail address.

Has a social media tool improved your students’ lives in some way? Please contact me to do a guest piece!

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