Edublogs 2012 nominations

Well, it's been a long time. Can't believe just how long, but then I've not made it here because I've felt guilty about blogging while I had deadlines hanging over my head for a new book, another chapter of a forthcoming book, and lots of work to do on two European projects that are coming to an end.

Thanks to Joe Pereira for bringing our attention to the 2012 Edublog awards, and, of course for nominating Digital Play for an award - you've always been one of our greatest supporters, Joe. Say what you like about the value of awards such as this, but what Joe says in his post about being supported is important - the thing I particularly like about these type of awards is that it's very democratic and it does bring people's attention to some great sites that otherwise might not be so well known. So, without further ado, here are my nominations for this year's Edublog awards:-

• Best individual blog - Barbara Sakamoto's Teaching Village http://www.teachingvillage.org. Always worth checking out, Barbara has made a point of inviting lots of very interesting people to write guest blog posts over the years that she has been blogging - a great read
• Best individual tweeter - @joedale. After being out of touch for a while, it was a joy to connect to Joe again and it's great that he's extending his wings this year and helping the ELT and MFL edutech communities come together and share the great work that is being done by so many people. 
• Best new blog - IF Only http://www.theswanstation.com/wordpress. Although Joe Pereira's blog is now just over a year old, it still feels fresh, and it deserves to have much greater exposure. Dedicated to using interactive fiction in language learning and teaching, the blog is full of interesting advice and useful lesson plans for teachers.
• Best ed tech / resource sharing blog - Nicky Hockly's e-moderation station http://www.emoderationskills.com is always a great read and full of sound, practical advice, as you'd expect. 
• Best twitter hashtag - ELTChat: #eltchat (http://eltchat.org/). Continuing to lead and show others how Twitter can be best used to stimulate great ideas, and then making sure these are captured and archived by the community. Truly outstanding.
• Best teacher blog - this year, it's been Chia Suan Chong, http://chiasuanchong.com who has been the most enthusiastic teacher blogger in my books. What she writes is always interesting, but more than this, she chooses to experiment and document what goes on in her classroom and brings us into the room, giving us insights into teaching that is often missing from other blogs written by teachers. 
• Best free web tool - Class Dojo: http://www.classdojo.com - whatever you think about gamification, this excellent site has really taken off in the last year at our teaching centre, and it's proven to be a fabulous behaviour management tool for teachers with classes of kids (and even some teachers with older classes). We've written about it here.
• Best educational use of audio / video / visual - Kieran Donaghy's Film English blog http://film-english.com helps teachers make excellent use of video in the classroom and well deserves to be read by many more people. 
• Best educational wiki - Kyle Mawer's Online Games wiki: http://kylemawer.wikispaces.com/ - yes, I know. A bit cheeky of me to nominate Kyle's wiki, but I do think it's a great resource, and I'm the one who's writing these nominations, not Kyle. 
• Best open PD / unconference / webinar series - I agree with Joe here - the British Council's TeachingEnglish series of webinars is amazing http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/webinars
• Best educational use of a social network - The British Council's TeachingEnglish on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/TeachingEnglish.BritishCouncil) leads the way in my books, providing lots of interesting content for teachers as well as giving them a forum for discussion and promoting the most interesting ELT blog posts.
• Lifetime achievement - Graham Davies: http://www.ict4lt.org/ Graham, who passed away this year, did so much for ICT in education, and achieved so much for CALL during his lifetime. I feel honoured to have met him in person (at EuroCALL in Nice) and to have spent time with him online.

So, there you have it, These are my nominations for this year. Good luck to all of you, and let's see what happens when the voting begins.