Reflections on winning the Edublogs Award

It’s been a really great end to the year for Anseo.net.  Last week, the article, “Heads in the Cloud”, won the award for most influential blog post of 2009.  I want to thank everyone who voted for the article.  I really appreciate you taking the time to vote.

This was the first time anything I’ve written was nominated for an award so I was determined to stay up to “watch” the ceremony online despite its late kick-off.  As the ceremony is held in Australia, it was midnight in Ireland when it all began.  I was sitting on the sofa in my house with ear phones in, listening to the voices of the organisers, while my wife was sleeping upstairs.  It was a school night.

Every time someone won an award, they could take the microphone and give a little speech thanking people.  At 1:30am, my category came up and the result was announced.  I think I let out a small yelp of delight but Rozz didn’t hear it.  The organisers asked whether I was there to make a short speech.  The question was: should I give the speech and wake my wife or should I type my acceptance.  I chose the latter to plenty of LOLs from the crowd.

It’s a strange feeling winning an award like this.  It took a lot of hard work to write the article, through research, etc. and it’s great that the edublogging community saw it fit to give it such an accolade.  I kind of feel like I’ve won the world cup… for checkers.  Not that many people really care.  I wasn’t expecting to appear on TV or anything lke that but I would feel that this article and all the winning entries in the awards deserve a lot more credit in the world of education.  Having said this, I’m absolutely thrilled to have this achievement to add to my site and I’m very proud to have the Edublog awards badge positioned on the front of Anseo.net for evermore.