With the end of another school year and the flurry of reports, exams and other (unnecessary) minutiae of school life bearing down fast, I thought I’d better get in fast and nominate a few fellow bloggers for the 2008 Edublogs Awards.

Here are my ‘picks of the year’.

Best individual blog – Darcy Moore’s ‘Darcy’s Blog’ is at times wonderfully eclectic work of a school administrator with vision and passion that makes him jump the 40ft chasm not in two 20ft steps (like many others in his position) but with one leap and lots of room to spare. I have often said to Darcy “your staff are lucky to have you”.

Best new blog – Rob Abbey’s ‘Journeys on the Road’ (recently changed to ‘Life and Learning’, the link here is live). And I only started to read this a couple of weeks ago! This is a thinker’s blog that starts to go beyond the obvious and the often superficial hype. It is a thoughtful mesh of critical thinking and experience I would recommend to anyone with a bend for educational philosophy.

Most influential blog post -Chris Betcher’s ‘The Truth is Out There’ The stirrer from Sydney. This post generated much excellent discussion among my colleagues and my senior students and I am grateful to Chris for elaborating many of my own views.

Best Ed-Tech support – Julian Ridden’s ‘Moodleman Blog’ The Moodle wizard I have not yet met in person yet but I feel we have known each other for years through some wonderful collaboration. While Moodle is in his bloodstream, there is much more to Julian’s writing than just that. Thank you for all the tips and eye-openers.

Best teacher blog – Tony Searl’s ‘Sliced bread’ Now here is another bloke I could have a beer with tomorrow and it would be like we have known each other for years. His reply to one of my own posts (My f*%$#ing goosebump story) is a classic to treasure. Cheers!

(Hmmm, just noticed – all my nominees are male, please don’t read into this much )

The special mention list is long…

Sue Waters, the wonderful, choc-loving and ever helpful Twitter fiend

Bryn Jones, the tireless (and priceless) local “wise guy” from Fremantle

Kathry Greenhill, a fellow Murdoch University alumni and Emerging Tech guru

Mary Cooch, the thoughtful Moodle hot potato from the UK

Rhys Moult, the Adelaide ‘jack of all trades’, social networker par excellence and the best practical joker in this group

Mark Callagher, the right-on Kiwi targeting secondary schools

Jenny Millea, a dynamo of thought and action

… and more (this is a bit unfair to a stack of other people but I am sure they’ll live ) !

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and efforts throughout the year.

To a newbie to the world of blogging like me, this has been truly a memorable (first) year and in no small part thanks to your writing, comments, reactions and arguments.

Best wishes to all.

Tomaz

Over the last few days I have been following a great conversation on the Brittanica Blog about Web 2.0 (pron. “web two-oh”) and its potential to change project-based learning thanks to its collaborative nature. I have thoroughly enjoyed the critical examination of myths and hype by a number of fine minds, notably by Daniel Willingham responding to Steve Hargadon’s vision of (usefulness of) Web 2.0 tools in education. Further, some of the comments have been even more impressive than the post itself! For a useful summary of the post and a handy digest of comments I would point you to Robert Pondiscio’s post.

It was all kind of loose blog lurking until a comment by Sylvia Martinez caught my eye.

“Web 2.0 connection that project-based learning has with Web 2.0 is limited. It happens to make a few things that project-based classrooms do a little easier. So it’s highly unlikely that Web 2.0 will overcome the obstacles to project-based learning. We know what those obstacles are, we know what needs to be done (there are thousands of terrific books on these subjects) — and we still don’t do them. We keep looking for a magic wand, and Web 2.0 is the latest one.

The topic was “will Web 2.0 be an integral part of K-12 education” – but everyone seems to have changed it to “will Web 2.0 CHANGE K-12 education”. Totally different. Web 2.0 may become something teachers have in their toolkit, but still used in a way that supports the dominant paradigm. You can certainly have Web 2.0 drill and test, just as easily as open ended blogs.

Without a serious to change K-12 education, Web 2.0 will simply become integrated into the existing way that schools do business.

“Will Web 2.0 CHANGE K-12 education?” My antennas went up! I have often likened Web 2.0 to a Trojan horse for/of change to something that is better than the centuries old warehousing of kids, sorting them like sacks of potatoes, then calling one student or even a school ‘good’ and another ‘bad’. My school, euphemistically called ‘difficult to staff school’ is more often labelled as the latter. So rather than reheating the ‘learning potential’ debate, I look at Web 2.0 from a slightly different angle.

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