Edublog awards 2009 … and the winner is..

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

The Edublog Awards have come and gone for another year! It was a great round-up with some wonderful results!I’m really excited by the results of the Best Library/ Librarian category.

–Winner: Never Ending Search
–First Runner Up: Bright Ideas
–Second Runner Up: Library Tech Musings

It was fantastic to see Joyce’s Never Ending Search win! Joyce has been leading and inspiring teacher librarians in so many many ways. You’re streets ahead of us girl!! Also, congratulations to our Victorians at Bright Ideas … an information rich blog provided by the School Library Association of Victoria.

Special thanks to all the kind people who sent a vote in my direction. You were very generous 🙂

I was also thrilled to hear Karl Fisch win the Lifetime Award for 2009 – by a very strong margin. Fantastic Karl! Glad you made it to the Elluminate ceremony.

–Winner: Karl Fisch
–First Runner Up: Will Richardson
–Second Runner Up: Larry Ferlazzo

Congratulations and celebrations to all winners and participants.Thanks to the Edublogs team for making these connections for us again…another year ~ a myriad opportunities

Empathy and Meaning

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

Once again I’ve had a wonderful time participating in live blogging A Whole New Mind with students from Arapahoe High School. I wish I had time to do more – it’s an amazing experience.

This year I joined up for two classes, discussing chapters in the book by Daniel Pink. Using MeBeam, we could hear the students adding depth to their personal ideas, and challenging each other to think more deeply about the implications of each of the chapters for their schooling, their lives and society.

Karl Fisch set this up again this year at the A Whole New Mind 09 wiki. It’s the beginning of the year for me, so it’s not easy to help out much – this year two sessions had to be my limit. But the last class on the ‘roster’ happens to be at 6:15 am, so I can make it and still get to school. You can read more about the fishbowl discussion technique. Drop over to the CoverItLite replay of the blogging discussions.

My chapters for involvement this time were Empathy (where I caught up with Julie Lindsay, wonderful aussie who is head of Information Technology at Qatar Academy in Doha.) and Meaning.

I loved saying hi! to the students. Their efforts were very impressive – wonderful thoughtful discussions. Likewise, the students blogging, who were also listening to the conversation, were extending their thinking in a number of ways, responding to our feedback, throwing out questions to us, and holding their own once again in terms of highly valuable and reflective discussion.

It at wonderful way for me to start the year. It reminds me of the goals we are working towards at our school – embracing technology in immersive and interactive ways to promote 21st century learning of the best kind.

Karl is an inspiration to us downunder, providing concrete evidence of success in changing the way we manage our learning environment. Karl’s work helps me keep my focus.

Special thanks to the students who shared their thoughts with their external visitors. Next year when the call for people to be involved goes out I highly recommend that you consider joining in. It’s easy, and a great way to see 21st century learning in action.

A Whole New Mind – Pink style

Posted on February 2, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

6.00 am on Saturday morning, and at last it was my turn to join one of the classes for live blogging A Whole New Mind with students from Arapahoe High School.

Some weeks ago Karl Fisch (you’ll remember his Did You Know 2.0? video) put out a call for people to participate in ‘live blogging’ over a series of weeks, and you can see the timetable of these events at AWNMLiveBlogging. Luckily for me I could make the Period 6 timeslot on a few of the dates.

I’ve just completed my first session with these fabulous students. The record of just this one class group is at Smith 9H07-08.

What I can’t capture here was the opportunity to hear the fishbowl discussion technique in action. Using MeBeam, a web-based video chat tool, I heard every fabulous word of discussion, along with my fellow bloggers Christian Long and Gary Stager.

Yet another wonderful way to add flexibility and creativity to learning as a multimodal conversation.

Photo: 油姬