Edublog Award Winners announced 2009

The Edublog award winners were announced last night, and I'd first like to say Congratulations to all the winners, runners-up and those who reached the shortlists.

This year, Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day was awarded 2nd runner up in the Best Resource Sharing blog category - so very many thanks for all of you who took the time to vote for it.

Thanks too for those who voted for me in the Lifetime Achievement award, where I actually came in a respectable 5th!

You can view all the winners and runners in all the categories - together with all the voting results - at the Edublog Awards site.

I know that there are some people who don't like the idea of blogging awards since all bloggers' work is of value - and this is true - but the Edublog Awards certainly does do a lot to promote educational blogging, and is therfore a good place to find blogs as well as other resouces that are valued by educators. 

However, although there is a Best e-learning/corporate education blog award in the Edublog categories, only a handful of corporate/workplace bloggers appeared on the shortlist.  Maybe it's time for some sort of similar activity that focuses on - and showcases - blogging in the area of workplace learning, that is blogs ABOUT workplace learning as well as those using blogs FOR workplace learning?  Would anyone else be interested in something like this?

Comments

[Harold Jarche]

I followed the links and looked at the winners and runners-up. I noticed that I recognized very few of the names. I would conclude that because I don't read many edubloggers (even with over 300 feeds in my aggregator), that I'm not an edublogger either. Topics like collaborative work, performance improvement & social learning in the workplace may be related to structured education, but our conversations are happening outside the edublogger community.

[Janet Clarey]

Yes Jane, I'd be interested. I thought I'd find a few new corporate education blogs on the edublog winners list when I didn't recognize names. Then learned they were higher education or K12 and not 'corporate' as I view it. I think there's a significant difference between corporate/workplace blogs and edu blogs.

[Mark Berthelemy]

Hi Jane,

It's interesting that a few years back I "knew" most of the people on the edublog awards list. At the time, Stephen Downes was the main voice in a field which had a lot of cross-over between education and workplace learning. Things have changed a lot. There are many more education professionals reflecting online about what they're doing, and correspondingly a lot more fragmentation in the community.

I think you're right that we now need to recognise the specific characteristics of workplace learning. There are things we can learn from the various contexts where technology is used to support learning. There is a cross-over role for someone like George Siemens here, who seems to sit happily in both camps.

[Account Deleted]

I'm not an edublogger either. Topics like collaborative work, performance improvement & social learning in the workplace may be metin2 hileleri related to structured education, but our conversations are happening outside the edublogger community.

[Jay Cross]

I wonder if we should couple this with the LearnTrends conference since it, too, focuses on workplace issues and trends. Sticky wicket would be conflicts-of-interest. LearnTrends participants often know us by name already.