Edublog Award Nominations

I recently heard about the Edublog Awards and wanted to nominate a few of my colleagues. I'm a pretty avid blogger and here are a few of my favorite educational blogs.

■ Best individual blog - The Carrot Revolution
As a visual person I appreciate varied imagery and mixed media and this blog does it right!

■ Best individual tweeter - @TomWhitby
Tom Whitby is a fellow Long Islander and founder of #Edchat. I've never met him but his tweets keep me up to date on all the educational talk while I'm hidden away in my classroom.

■ Best group blog - Illustration Friday
This is a fantastic blog that posts a new theme each week and is open to submissions. We use it in my advanced art classes and it's a great way to get feedback from artists outside the classroom giving advice and encouragement to the students.

■ Best class blog - Colin Maxwell's Maximized
Colin teaches Computer Arts and Digital Design at Carnegie College in Scotland and is someone I came in contact with through the Adobe Education Leader program. I love how he uses Adobe Connect on his page and regularly post tutorials and lessons in different media, pretty terrific stuff.

■ Best student blog- Nataliee Loves Art
Here's a blog from one of my current AP students where she has begun to showcase her portfolio and discuss the work she is doing.

■ Best ed tech / resource sharing blog- Dan Pink Blog
Of course the best art advocacy comes from a former lawyer and businessman but Pink's resources are always useful and often inspiring.

■ Most influential blog post- TED
This is easily the blog that I use most as a teacher and I'm not the only one, it's always thought provoking

■ Best twitter hashtag- #Educationnation
I was late to the game with Education Nation but their twitter posts and discussions are really interesting.

■ Best teacher blog- Moodlea
This blog from Buckinghamshire County, England comes from another one of my former AEL compatriots Ian Usher and has the best Moodle info out there among other things.

■ Best librarian / library blog- A Media Specialist's Guide To The Internet
This is a fantastic resource with tons of helpful information and it's always fresh!

■ Best School Administrator blog- A Principal's Reflections
I often imagine working at New Milford High School because Principal Eric Sheninger is possibly the most tech friendly Principal ever and the info he shares is always interesting. A wealth of knowledge also comes across his twitter feed.

■ Best free web tool- Photoshop.com
This tool is brilliant, I love how students can work at home, at school, or on their mobile devices and save their work in the cloud plus it's a pretty sleek design that's had a few new additions lately.

■ Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast- Dryden Art
As a high school and adjunct college teacher I love to see what's going on in this video of an elementary art class

■ Best educational wiki- Ms. Santangelo's Wiki
This is from a Smithtown HS East colleague and I hear from the students that they are using it all the time. I like the wealth of information up on the wiki and the willingness to share, it's not always so common.


■Best open PD / unconference / webinar series- Kathy Schrock's Guide for educators
Kathy is another former AEL teammate who put up this fantastic resource that is open to educators, in addition she's known for her amazing professional development work in Second Life.

■ Best educational use of a social network - Japan Sociey's Going Global
The educational wing of New York's Japan Society put together this moodle site connecting classrooms across the US with classrooms in Pakistan and Japan. This semester was just a first run but already I can say my classes are more globally informed and really benefitted from the experience of doing the same lesson collaboratively with students from around the world.

■ Lifetime achievement - Alan November's novemberlearning
Alan can be a bit abrasive but content wise he was out on the tech highway as an early adopter and kept it up with some really important media awareness issues and plenty of good content.