Coming of Age: An introduction to the new worldwide web

By Josie Fraser

Fear of blogging
Recent news regarding student use of web logs has not been particularly positive. Fears that students may misuse the platform or, conversely, find themselves at the mercy of evil blog trawlers, have led to institutions calling a halt to student blogging – in at least one instance, even in the student’s own time. Rather than looking at how the curriculum might best address the task of supporting learners in becoming responsible, web-savvy citizens, sites such as MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/) and Xanga (http://www.xanga.com/) are, instead, being outlawed.

And it isn’t just obviously recreational sites that are being blocked on school networks. Although educators, learners and researchers have been using blogs constructively for over five years now, educational web logs – edublogs – are currently being blocked at district level by school authorities (see http://incsub.org/blog/2005/edublogs-being-blocked). In effect, this means that despite the recognition by multiple governments of the value of e-learning (to individuals and economies), and despite an emerging body of research and numerous examples of great educational practice, web logs – which provide a simple way for educators and students to create and participate in collaborative, conversational and distributed learning communities – are being excluded from the day-to-day business of education.

The Edublog Awards
Last year saw the second international Edublog Awards, a web-based event that recognises the many diverse and imaginative ways in which web logs are being used within education, and promotes positive and creative uses of new web technologies in the classroom. Peer- nominated blogs from across the globe compete in 10 categories, these being:

Most innovative edublogging project, service or programme.
• Best newcomer.
• Most influential post, resource or presentation.
• Best designed/most beautiful edublog.
• Best library/librarian blog.
• Best teacher blog.
• Best audio and/or visual blog.
• Best example/ case study of use of web logs within teaching and learning.
• Best group blog.
• Best individual blog.

The full list, descriptive paragraphs, and links to all the finalists can be found at the Edublog Awards site at http://www.incsub.org/awards/ – providing a powerful example of how educators are harnessing the potential of weblog technology, and a rich snapshot of the methods and practices of the learners and educators at the forefront of educational technology today.

The results
Winners were announced at the awards event webcast, hosted by Worldbridges (http://worldbridges.com/livewire/) on Sunday December 18th.

The Awards
The international Edublog Awards (http://www.incsub.org/awards/) are an online community-based initiative designed to recognise and celebrate excellence in educational and scholarly blogging (edublogging) and promote the use of web logs to support teaching and learning.
The awards were founded by James Farmer (http://incsub.org/) in 2004, in response to a call by Alex Halavais (http://alex.halavais.net/) for an award programme in response to the under representation/recognition of educational uses and users of blogs in existing blog awards, and are currently managed by Josie Fraser (http://fraser.typepad.com/edtechuk). This year’s awards team were geographically based in Europe, Canada and the US.

The event is designed to achieve four things:
• Promote and publicise the positive and creative use of new web technologies and practises in the classroom and throughout both formal and informal education.
• Create an annotated archive/resource which captures the spirit and concerns of the edublogging community and exemplifies best practice.
• Recognise and reward the achievements of individual edubloggers.
• Contribute to edublogger community building and networks of practise.

You can find the full list, descriptive paragra