The Edublog Awards are an annual, community based programme which recognises and celebrates excellent practice in the use of weblogs and social media to facilitate education. Entries are welcome from any country, in any language, from educators working with any age group or type of learner, including learner led initiatives. Nominations open within categories in November of each year, with the Awards event taking place in December following a community vote.

History

The Awards were founded in 2004 by James N. Farmer

James N. Farmer

James N. Farmer is founder and CEO of Edublogs.org, the largest global weblog community for educators. James is currently based in Australia, where he has been the Online Community Editor of The Age, and Lecturer in Education Design at Deakin University...

. The following year, Josie Fraser took over the awards management, working with Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow

Jeff Lebow

Jeff Lebow is a webcasting pioneer and community builder and internet philanthropist in the fields of online learning and new media. Jeff is the founder of Worldbridges and the co-founder of EdTechTalk. He has long been an advocate of the value of live interactive webcasting as a vehicle of social...

 from 2005 onwards. In 2007 James N. Farmer

James N. Farmer

James N. Farmer is founder and CEO of Edublogs.org, the largest global weblog community for educators. James is currently based in Australia, where he has been the Online Community Editor of The Age, and Lecturer in Education Design at Deakin University...

 rejoined the team, and Jo Kay joined the team for the first time, providing the awards ceremony with a home in the virtual world platform Second Life

Second Life

Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...

.

Goals

The three main aims behind the awards are to:

• Provide an opportunity for an international community who are interested and involved in scholarly and education based blogging (edublog
  Edublog
  An edublog is a blog written by someone in education. Examples might include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. The collection of these blogs is called the edublogosphere by some, in keeping with...
  
  ) and the use of social media an opportunity to come together as a community, discover new ways of using blogging and social media to support learning, and highlight the wealth of effective,innovative work being carried out globally.

• Provide a concrete, annually updated resource for those involved in or thinking about using social software and user generated content sites to support education communities of all kinds. They also demonstrate the diverse use made of blogs, wikis, audiovisual tools, virtual worlds and social networking platforms.

• Demonstrate that new technologies can be used in positive, innovative, safe and effective ways. The Awards programme is designed to act as an argument against a moral panic approach to the use of technologies in education that threatens innovative and creative practice. The Awards argue that digital literacy and social participation for learners, educational employees and institutions as the effective way to address potential dangers, as opposed to banning and restricting access within education and library services.

Past winners

2004
2005
2006
2007