Tag Archives: best

Surprise! Edublogs Awards nomination

I am surprised, honoured, ashamed and excited about my blog making the Edublogs 2011 nominations in the Best Teacher Blog category. Thank you to Judith Way, a constant support and person who has inspired me and many others, for the nomination. First time I made it to the shortlist for which I am grateful. So, to explain the shame, I haven’t made time to nominate anybody this year which is a great pity because I would have liked to.

The Edublogs Awards are a fantastic way to discover new blogs and bloggers in all the categories. Each year my RSS reader bulges with new subscriptions after these discoveries. It’s a good thing the holidays are coming up – a chance to spend the time browsing and collecting.

There are so many exemplary people nominated, and many of those outside Australia, but there has been a growing Australian and New Zealand cohort too, and if I had (sigh) managed to vote, I would have voted for some of these –

Best individual blog Slightly addicted to fiction

Best Teacher blog What Ed Said

Best librarian / library blog Lucacept and Heyjude and Library Currants

Best new blog The Way Forward

Best class blog LRC Blog (because the library is a big classroom)

Most influential blog post – Chris Betcher: Tiny bursts of learning

Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast EdTechCrew

Best open PD / unConference / webinar series Australia e-Series and  Tech Talk Tuesdays

Lifetime achievement Anne Mirtschin

And that’s definitely not everyone. I’m sure I’ve missed brilliant people. Thank you, if you’ve been reading my blog. Please come in for a chat as often as you like. I might be writing for self expression but I’m really writing for you.

Top 100 best of everything

Photo courtesy of Beverly_&_Pack on Flickr

A while ago I was surprised to discover that my blog was included in a list of 100 most inspiring and innovative blogs for education published by Online University Reviews.

At the time I just skimmed the extensive lists, but this evening I have been poring over lists in different categories, and I must say, they’re definitely worth looking at.

Not one for business or gossip, here are some of the lists which caught my eye:

50 best blogs for grammar geeks

10 important writers who went to jail for their work

100 best scholarly art blogs divided into the categories of best art news, best art critic, best art communities, best artists’ blogs, best artist inspirational blogs, best children’s art, best art photography and best art resources

(also including Art forum Australia)

50 free games for teaching literacy online

100 useful tutorials for the twittering librarian including for the beginner, best blogs for Twitter, best way to find other twittering librarians, best timesavers for Twitter, best ways to promote your library using Twitter, best tools for Twitter, best games for Twitter, best add-ons for Twitter, best image tools for Twitter, best video tools for Twitter, best books for Twitter and best librarians to follow on Twitter.

50 best websites for modern Shakespearean scholars

50 incredible books every educator should read

100 famous writers you can follow on Twitter

100 most inspiring and innovative blogs for educators – these are divided into the categories: general teaching blogs, specialty subject blogs, best podcasts for teachers, best video blogs for teachers.

top 100 poetry blogs

100 open courses to take your writing to the next level

top 100 liberal arts professor blogs – these are divided into art, economics, education, english, history, maths, media/technology, music, philosophy, psychology, political science, science, sociology and theology

50 best blogs for literacy teachers including ESL/EFL, grammar, literary criticism and reading promotion

I hope you have an enormous amount of time on you hands because you’ll need a small lifetime to investigate all these links. I’ve been madly saving some of these to my Diigo library. Although I doubt that these lists even cover most of the best of the best – obviously other bests exist elsewhere – it’s definitely a list where you can find something for everyone.

Life is One Big Top Ten 2008

I’m up for a challenge, especially one which allows me to reflect on my learning for this year as we near the end of 2008. Paul C. of Quoteflections has set a challenge to share a top ten list for 2008. It’s a great idea because it makes you think about and evaluate your findings for the year. Now that I’ve stopped to think, I realise that this year has jet-propelled me into a whole new way of learning and connecting. In May I started my blog, slowly connecting to many other bloggers through reading and commenting. This year I have also joined, as part of my school team, the Powerful Learning Practice cohort led by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. I’m only beginning to realise the depth and breadth of the  experiences within this learning network.

I would have no hesitation in saying that my most powerful ‘lesson’ this year has been that people are our most valuable resource, and so I’ve chosen as my Top Ten 2008 List:

Links to sites that demonstrate that we are better through sharing.

histografica

1.  Histografica: Picture the past

This site allows you to find and share historical photos of places around the world. You could discover photos of your old hometown or places you’ve been to. It’s a site that develops its archives as people share their photos. Only a few countries have been represented so far, but I’m sure the collection will grow.

2.  LIFE’s photo archive on view Google. Read about it here.

It’s one of the most magnificent photo archives of the past century and it’s now available on Google. It’s the Life magazine collection, some 10 million images altogether, and after the deal between Google and the keepers of the Life archive, a vast chunk is now at Google Image Search.

3. Phrasr allows you to create a visual phrase. The words in your phrase are matched with flickr images which you can choose for your picture phrase. The sharing part is the archive you can browse, and you can share your own visual phrases.

Here is my blog post about Phrasr.

4.  Flickr tools

Mentalaxis has a comprehensive list of flickr tools so that you can creatively share your photos. For example, Travelr lets you display your flickr photos geographically on a world map.

5.  280 slides

As it says on the website, create beautiful presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world. With 280 Slides, there’s no software to download and nothing to pay for – and when you’re done building your presentation you can share it any way you like.

6.  Capzles

Capzles is a new way to combine videos, photos and mp3s into rich, multimedia storytelling. Read about it in my blog post.

7.   A picture’s worth  is a wonderful site where people are encouraged to write about the meaning or story behind a personal photograph. As the site says, “A Picture’s Worth” provides a haven for people to truly “show and tell”.

You can read more about it in my blog post.

8.  Larry Ferlazzo’s websites of the day

This is not a tool or website, but I’ve included Larry’s blog because I believe people are the best source of information and sharing on the web. Larry was nominated as a finalist in the Best Resource-Sharing Blogs category of the Edublogs Awards in 2007 and again this year, and here he shares a list of education blogs that generously share resources and links.

A list of resource-sharing blogs nominated for the Edublogs award 2008 is definitely worth a look.

9.  Us Now is a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet. Have a look at the ‘Your videos’ page, still in its early stages. Here’s a video called ‘Video republic’:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JX5jWv-tk&eurl=http://www.usnowfilm.com/clips/41&feature=player_embedded]

Read Clay Shirky’s  transcript of this clip.

10. I wrote a post about YouTube Symphony Orchestra a little while ago. This will be the first ever collaborative online orchestra.

We invite musicians from around the world to audition for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Your video entries will be combined into the first ever collaborative virtual performance, and the world will select the best of you to perform at New York City’s Carnegie Hall in April 2009.

This one tops the list for me. It’s collaborative, it’s global, it’s a celebration of talent, it’s inviting the world to make music together.

As suggested by Paul, I’ve tagged the following esteemed bloggers:

Marie Salinger at Just in time; Sue Tapp at And another thing; Allanah King at Life’s not a race to be first finished; Jenny Luca at Lucacept; and Rhonda Powling at Rhondda’s reflections: wandering around the web.