Category: Ed Tech

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Edublog Awards Nominations 2012

It’s that time of year again. Time to submit nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards.

There are those who criticise the idea of giving out awards for educational blogs as being a bit silly, or a bit unnecessary, or a bit selfserving, or a bit self-indulgent. They complain that the voting process is flawed, or that it’s just a popularity contest, or that it promotes the wrong kinds of values.  Some complain that it’s just a chance for gratuitous self promotion, both for the bloggers themselves and for the companies that promote educational blogging.

I’m not one of those people. I think anything that supports, encourages and promotes the use of blogs in education is a good thing. Blogs are all about writing, sharing, thinking, pondering. Writing a blog forces you to clarify your thinking, state your position, defend your point of view. Blogging is a way to connect with others, debate ideas that matter to you, build a community of learners and be part of a bigger conversation.

Some say that blogs are not really needed any more now that we have so many other outlets. Yes, social networks are wonderful forums for sharing, but blogs are different. Facebook and Google+ have taken over many of the sharing functions that blogs originally had, and for simple sharing of links, videos and pictures, they probably do a better job. Twitter might be a quick, easy and more conversational way to share stuff, but it’s highly ephemeral and can lack depth because of the 140 character limit. A good blog can go deeper, have greater substance, more permanence, and better reflect the personality of the blogger.

Speaking personally, a large part of the connection, camaraderie and community that I experience every day from my network of friends and colleagues originated from my blog. So many of the opportunities I’ve had to meet, talk, share and even travel, have come from the connections I’ve made here. Don’t underestimate the value of blogging. But blogging takes work. It takes a degree of dedication and commitment to stick with it, to keep producing posts that push your thinking a little bit further each time. It takes a degree of bravery to commit ideas to print for the world to see, and to be willing to both stand by your beliefs, to be willing to have them challenged, and sometimes changed. Sure, blogging is about writing, but it’s about so much more than just writing. Blogging is personal growth in a public forum. And that takes courage.

So I don’t think the idea of having Edublog Awards is silly at all. If people are willing to put their ideas out there and engage in conversation with others, they deserve every bit of encouragement and recognition they can get.

So, it is with pleasure that I present my nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards…

Best Individual Blog
Jabiz Raisdana (http://www.jabizraisdana.com/blog/)  Jabiz is a thinker… always challenging, always thoughtful, always pushing the boundaries. He shares openly and freely, he understands what it means to be a node in a network, and he is never afraid to explore his ideas in public. He writes with passion and insight and deserves to be read widely.

Best Teacher Blog
Rebekah Madrid (http://rebekahmadrid.wordpress.com/) Rebekah defines what it means for a teacher to have heart and soul. She cares so deeply about what she does and the students she teaches, and her blog puts it all out there for the world. She is a teacher who shares what goes on in her classroom, and in sharing her thinking with the world she strives to make it better all the time.

Best Teacher Blog
Zoe Page (http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/pagez/) Zoe is a kindergarten teacher who discovered the value of connectedness a couple of years ago and fully embraced it. She’s not a techie, just a passionate and committed educator who cares enormously about being the best teacher she can be. Her blog shares what she does with her kids and documents a personal journey of enormous growth.

Most Influential Blogpost
Everything you know about curriculum may be wrong. Really. (http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/everything-you-know-about-curriculum-may-be-wrong-really/)  Easily the best blog post I’ve read this year. Maybe ever. It deserves all the attention it gets.

Best Library Blog
PLC Junior School Library (http://blogs.ludus.me/jlibrary/) Sandra McMullan is the librarian who publishes this blog. Although I was the person who introduced her blogging in the first place, I think she deserves recognition for the way she has embraced the idea and evolved her blog into a really vibrant online resource of links, book reviews, photos, and news.

Best educational use of audio/video/visual/podcast
The Google Educast (http://edreach.us/channel/googleeducast/) Ok, full disclaimer, I sometimes get to be part of this video podcast on the Edreach network, but since I’m not personally responsible for it, I’m nominating it anyway. The Google Educast is a weekly video podcast hosted by an amazing group of Google Certified Teachers that share news, tips and ideas for teaching with Google tools. It was one of the first podcasts to adopt the use of Google+ Hangouts on Air.

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Taking the Long View

I was recently given the privilege of giving a short keynote talk for the upcoming Flat Classroom Project cohort. The Flat Classroom Project is a wonderful professional learning program run by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay which focuses on getting teachers and students working together on global collaborative projects – connecting classrooms around the world to work together. Julie contacted me recently to ask if I would be interested in doing it and I jumped at the opportunity.

I was fortunate that I started doing some really full-on global collaborative projects with students back in the late 1990s, thanks to a program that was run by AT&T called Virtual Classroom. Although the format of the VC program was meant to be competitive – teams of three classrooms from around the world worked together to build a website on an agreed common theme – the essential principles of working together online were very much ingrained into my brain over the three years we worked on these projects. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the experience of doing these projects not only helped me to understand how to be a better teacher, but it’s what kept me involved in, and enthusiastic about, teaching. Without those few intense years of seeing the power of connecting, communicating and collaborating together across the world, it’s a fair bet that I would not still be teaching today. It was quite literally my “peek over the pail” to see exactly what education could really be all about, and it’s influenced almost everything I’ve done since. Those projects had a significant long term effect on me as an educator.

Those students I worked with back then are all in their late 20s now and I often wonder if they experienced the same sort of long term benefit from our global projects. So when Julie and Vicki asked if I would do this keynote I thought it might be a great opportunity to find these guys and actually ask them that question. Although I haven’t kept in regular contact with all of them over the years, I managed find several of them on Facebook to ask them whether they felt it made a difference to them. Just the fact that they were so willing to talk to me and reminisce about what we did 15 years ago, I think says a lot about the relationships and connections that these projects created.

And really, it’s in those relationships and connections, and being able to play a part in creating ripples of influence that reach far into the future that make teaching so different to so many other professions. It’s why those of us who love it, love it.

Anyway, the keynote video is on the Flat Classroom Project site, but (with Julie and Vicki’s permission) I thought I’d share it with you here too.

Special thanks go to Daniel, Richard, Peter, Chris and Laurie. You guys were awesome back in school, and you’re just as awesome now. Thanks for helping me learn what it means to learn.

I also want to say how grateful I am for my co-teacher partners in crime from those days – Janette Wilmott, Janet Barnstable, Mariko Yana, Hajime Yanase.

If you’ve never tried working globally, do yourself a favour and give it a go. Get involved in Flat Classroom Project, or even checkout the Global Virtual Classroom (what the original Virtual Classroom Project morphed into)  If you just look around, there are so many opportunities for collaborating online together… just find one and dive in. You won’t be sorry you did. Just ask my students.

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Reflections on China, Part 1

This post is likely to be the first of a couple of reflections about my recent experiences in Beijing for the Learning 2.012 conference. There is so much to absorb; the organisation and location of the conference itself, the experience of spending a week in China’s amazing capital city, but mostly the genuine privilege of being able to spend time with a remarkable group of talented educators from around the globe.

The Pearl MarketFirstly, China. This is my second trip to China, the previous being for the same conference two years ago in Shanghai. I wrote some thoughts about that trip at the time and how awestruck I was by China’s rapid growth. That certainly hasn’t changed. China is still full of surprises, and especially so in Beijing where there is such a dramatic contrast between the ancient and the modern. On my first full day there I got to go shopping for pearls with Julie Lindsay and Lucy Gray (trust me, that Julie knows how to shop!) and then later that day Lucy and I explored the Forbidden City together. The size and scale of the Forbidden City was hard to comprehend, as was the fact that the buildings were three times older than modern Australia! We entered from the south gate and wandered all the way up to the north gate. We even, allegedly, met a guy who is the nephew of the last emperor. I didn’t buy his calligraphy, and I’m not sure I buy his story, but it was still a great experience. On the way home we were driven past Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, and although we were unable to stop and explore them on foot, just seeing the enormity of them was impressive enough.

Me on the Great Wall of ChinaThe next day, Adrian Camm joined Lucy and I for a trip to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China with our very entertaining driver Charlie. It’s easy to see why the Great Wall is one of the Wonders of the World. At over 5000 km long and over 2000 years old, the wall is breathtaking in scale and built along the craggy ridges of a rugged mountain range. The engineering required to construct this ancient wall is almost unimaginable. At Mutianyu, you can drive right up to the base of the mountain and then get whisked to the top of the Wall by a chairlift, which surprised me. Even more surprising was the fact that your return trip is by tobogganing down the winding S-curves of a steel sled track built into the mountain! I did not expect that.

The Great Wall itself was quite an experience. Words can’t adequately describe what it felt like to be standing there on top of a structure as old as the Roman Empire and having it continue along the mountain ridge as far as we could see (which admittedly with the Beijing smog was not all that far). The Wall is quite a strenuous walk and Lucy, Adrian and I wandered along it until we really couldn’t go much further,and then with lots of great photos and memories (and even a FourSquare checkin)to take back home, we backtracked to our starting point.

After a fun toboggan ride back down the mountain (please can we do it again?!) we lunched at a place in Mutianyu called The SchoolHouse where we found an open wifi access point for more FourSquare checkins, Facebook updates and even a quick Google+ Hangout with Linda.

The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the tombs of the Ming Dynasty, including the Sacred Way. Oh, and of course Charlie treated us to his personal rendition of Chinese opera as we drove along. As you do.

Later that evening, after being driven around all day in a French Peugeot, we sat in an Irish pub, owned by an American couple, eating Italian Pizza, before we went back to the hotel to listen to music being played by a group of Filipino musicians.

Welcome to China.