Chris Betcher

It's that time of year again. Time to submit nominations for the 2012 Edublog Awards . There are those who criticise the idea of giving out awards for educational blogs as being a bit silly, or a bit unnecessary, or a bit selfserving, or a bit self-indulgent. They complain that the voting process is flawed, or that it's just a popularity contest, or that it promotes the wrong kinds of values.  Some complain that it's just a chance for gratuitous self promotion, both for the bloggers themselves and for the companies that promote educational blogging. I'm not one of those people. I think anything that supports, encourages and promotes the use of blogs in education is a good thing. Blogs are all about writing, sharing, thinking, pondering. Writing a blog forces you to clarify your thinking, state your position, defend your point of view. Blogging is a way to connect with others, debate ideas that matter to you, build a community of learners and be part of a bigger conversa...

You may think it a little indulgent, but every year the Edublog Awards are held to recognise those educators who have somehow managed to use blogs in a way that might be worthy of some acknowledgment. Whilst there will always be those who criticise awards programs as being too elitist, too self-promotional, too biased or too just plain wanky, I think it's great that there is this opportunity for those who are using blogging for educational purposes to get some sort of recognition for it, and also to uncover a whole lot of new blogs and bloggers that may not have been in your feeds. Thankfully, the nomination and voting procedures got a complete overhaul this year that will hopefully see them be a lot fairer and less open to manipulation than in past years. At the risk of sounding self-promotional and wanky, I just wanted to say how surprised I am to have not one, but two nominations this year in the Most Influential Blogpost category . To the folks that proposed the two nominat...