Just a few days till Christmas and not much more till the end of another academic year and actual year!! How different it is for us in the latter climes of the globe…..concluding everthing in time for Christmas. We are frenetic just at the time when my edublogging colleagues in opposite latitudes are hitting their academic stride – watch those blog feeds and gasp at the volume of conversations in all sorts of multi-threaded spaces.

I love ending the year with the wonderful Edublog Awards. Being caught up in changes myself I haven’t had time to properly thank all the wonderful people involved for hosting such a great fun event again. Thanks everyone! Special thanks to all those who took the time to nominate, vote, and read lots of ‘new to them’ blogs, and come to the celebration fun party ‘in world’ on the island of Jokaydia.

Luckily my friends haven’t been as slow of the mark. Thanks! Super congrats to award winner of best Library/Librarian blog A Library By Any Other Name, Vaughn Branom. Oooh, and I’m thrilled to see that the winner of Best Individual Blog is ScienceRoll, Berci Meskó, from Hungary. I like to follow the Hungarian blogosphere a little via my young librarian blogging friend Ádám Paszternák and his K-12 Webzine.

Kathryn Greenhill lists the winners and also tell us

Interspersed with the award announcements were Dave Cormier’s list of the Top 10 Educational Stories of 2007 . This was an international list – but number one was an Australian. A sixteen year old Australian, Tom Wood, who cracked the Federal Government’s internet filter within 30 minutes of it being released.

If you want to subscribe to all the winners with just one click, Andy Powell from Eduserv has created an OPML file of 2007 Edublog winners’ feeds .

Stephen Downes has contributed to this wonderful end-of-year extravaganza by posting Not the Edublog Award Winners.

His list is intended to shine some light on some people who really deserve some praise and wider notice – his personal ‘honourable mention’ category. Read this list too because Stephen has highlighted some fabulous people, services, tools and initiatives !!

That the blogosphere and all other social networking sites has grown is not in question. What is in question as we charge to the end of the year is what exactly will take prime place amongst our educational collaborative tools and what will just merge into pop culture.

For now I rely on the twitterverse to help me track the ebb and flow. Yesterday I woke up to find the twitterverse all agog about GoogleTalk IM with or without a gmail account, with the downloaded application or with the web only interface. My twitter ‘ever questioning’ friend Chris Betcher asks

I also rely on my conversations ‘in world’ as I catch up with my education colleagues from around the world while exploring the metaverse of SecondLife, where I attend conferences, talks, presentations and more, and where I have had the chance to collaborate with international colleagues, some of whom I first met recently at the Edublog awards ceremony.

How lovely to have lots of cute avatars come up to me and say Hi! thanks for your blog! I read you blog all the time… and I’m from Spain, Texas, and more.

So one of my special thankyou greetings for 2007 HAS to go to Jo Kay and Sean Fitzgerald for all their work in Second Life in Education. I wouldn’t be ‘in world’ without them 🙂

Do drop by Jokaydia some time. You might come across me there chatting with friends as I am a resident on Jo’s island at Heyjude Hall.

Better still, come and celebrate some Christmas cheer at the Jokaydian Christmas Party.

Join us for some dancing and socialising on the Island of jokaydia as we celebrate the festive season AND delivery of our new sim! (Yes, Jokadia is growing, and 2008 is going to be a great year!)

Where: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/113/150/23

Time: Saturday 22 December @ 6pm (Australian Time)
Friday 21 December @ 11pm (Second Life Time)
For more info IM jokay Wollongong

This long post has to conclude with a BIG THANK YOU to all the wonderful teachers and professional colleagues I have worked with during the last two years at the Catholic Education Office. You all know you are grand! and the work you will continue to do will be groundbreaking, despite the ‘top heavy’ constraints and rules that are beginning to emerge in some areas of the organisation. Keep in touch, and we will continue to work subversively to challenge, change, and make a real difference to the kids.

As for me? I’m moving onto a very exciting new role at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill here in Sydney, as Head of Library and Information Services. This is a fabulous school, part of the strong Marist network of schools around the world, with a long tradition of excellence in education here in Australia. I am excited at the honour and opportunity to work with teachers and students at the school – where I will be able to take innovation and educational change in new directions for library and Web 2.0 learning.

So on that note…it’s time for me to go and poke a few friends on Facebook, just for Christmas fun.

I am taking a long holiday break this summer…as I haven’t had a holiday since the middle of 2006!

Happy Christmas and best wishes for a fantastic 2008!

Photo: Christmas in Love