Thinking Blogger Award

"Thinking Machine 4" by tj.firer

Twitter has been a joy and a revelation for me. After initial resistance to what I felt might be yet another trendy online distraction, I cautiously ventured into the Twitterverse, and "stepped into the light."

I've found a supportive network of teachers, techies, and just plain interesting people from around the world. One of my new friends is Anne Mirtschin, a teacher at Hawkesdale P12 College, in Victoria, Australia.

"@murcha" uses the power of social networking to enhance and extend her students' learning. Her blog, On an e-journey with generation Y, was created as a journal to document this journey.

Anne has been kind enough to give me a Thinking Blogger award. I thank her for the honor and can honestly say that I have learned as much or more from her as she has from me. But isn't that the whole point of our brave new collaborative world?

About the award.

The participation rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).
In addition there is a note: “Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! ”

So, for 5 blogs that make me think:

• Students 2.0 Who is more important in the realm of education than the stakeholders, the students? This innovative cooperative blog lets us hear their voices and engage in a dialog about their concerns.
• Beyond School Clay Burell leads the fight against "schooliness" by constantly challenging his students - and his readers - to seek creative ways to move education into the 21st century. He is currently based in Korea, but his beat is the world.
• Not So Distant Future Carolyn Foote was one of my earliest online mentors. She exemplifies all the best qualities of a modern teacher/librarian.
• Assorted Stuff Tim Stahmer, an Instructional Technology Specialist in Virginia, combines observations about the state of public education with "comments on instructional technology, blogging and the read-write web (aka Web 2.0), various forms of media, digital rights and fair use, a very small dab of politics, and the everyday oddities of life that pop up." He is always interesting, entertaining, and informative.
  
• Tech Thoughts by Jen Jen Wagner offers practical advice on educational technology and invites teachers to participate in a variety of well-constructed, fun-to-do internet-based classroom projects. And her warm and friendly personality makes the digital world a much nicer place to visit!

Thank you, Anne, for sharing the award with me. It made a gloomy winter day a lot brighter!

"The world is round so that friendship may encircle it." -Pierre Teilhard De Chardin