Just a little love where it’s due.
Best Group Blog
Sup Teach?
http://supteach.blogspot.com/
I shared a bus ride with Ian Garrovillas at CMC-North and then a table at a conference session with him, Scott Farrar, their friend Joe, and some young genial guy named Dallas and, man – you just want to staff a school full of people your own age like that. And that’d be a terrible school and no good whatsoever for kids but you couldn’t mistake the loose-limbed, hyperkinetic vibe at that table, a vibe that I lack at a school where the next math teacher up the seniority ladder from me is in his 40s.
SupTeach? brings that vibe post after post.
Best New Blog
Sean Sweeney
http://sweeneymath.blogspot.com/
Sean opened huge with a month’s worth of killer multimedia resources but his blog’s been dark since early November. Consider this my encouragement to keep at it.
Best Teacher/Individual Blog
Kate Nowak
http://function-of-time.blogspot.com/
Kate’s second year blogging has been a blast to watch. I don’t know if I just imagined a surge in self-confidence, but her wit has never been sharper and she hasn’t hesitated to hip-check some of the biggest names in edublogging. Toss in a post count that belies how hard she works on a full-time teaching schedule and my nomination is locked.
Best Individual Tweeter
Elissa Miller
http://twitter.com/misscalcul8
If you missed it, Elissa became a teacher on Twitter. Starting last summer and continuing into her preservice year, she badgered her followers relentlessly for advice on classroom management and for help with lesson development. Incredibly, her persistence only scored her more followers, which has weird implications for teacher preparation in the 21st century.
Best Educational Use Of Video / Visual
Rhett Allain
http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/
Rhett pairs diagrams in Keynote with LaTeX equations to explain the physics behind the punkin chunkin and other frivolities. I’m not sure there’s anything in his life he wouldn’t film with a FlipCam and analyze with Tracker if it meant a better (or at least more amusing) understanding of physics for his readership. I’m particularly fond of the running, one-sided dialogue he has with various TV personalities who fudge their physics computation even a little. Mythbusters’ Adam Savage will rue the day.
Most Influential Blog Post
Weird Kipp Op-Ed, Tom Hoffman
http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2009/01/weird-kipp-op-ed.html
Tom’s recent coverage of the Common Core ELA Standards was exemplary and some of the best eduwonkery you’d find last year inside or outside of a funded think tank. But that was a Tom Hoffman pasteurized and bottled for transport as far outside his blog as he could get it. Tom’s best piece last year, for my money, was his withering takedown of an op-ed by KIPP’s Feinberg and Levin, the kind of excoriation that reminds me to pause that extra second before I hit “publish” just to ask myself: “Is Tom Hoffman gonna punch a hole in my chest for this or what?”
Lifetime Achievement Award
TMAO
http://roomd2.blogspot.com/
Amen.
The Jay-Z Honorarium For Most Convincing Non-Retirement
Christian Long
http://thinklab.typepad.com/
5 Comments
Sean Sweeney
December 8, 2009 - 3:13 pm -Once again, thank you so much Dan. I feel honored. I promised myself I would hold strict to updating at least once per week. Then I had to go and get engaged right when grades were due during a time of intermediate family crisis when I’m usually hibernating for the winter. Blah blah excuses excuses. Expect regular updates starting this week.
Ian Garrovillas
December 9, 2009 - 12:47 am -http://grab.by/14RT
See those spikes? That’s what happens each time you pass us a shout out. For that, along with all the other great things you’ve done for the edublogging community, we appreciate.
Karl
January 4, 2010 - 12:58 pm -Ouch! Is that a not-so-subtle dig at dinosaur math teachers who are >40? Good thing I’m 39.849 or I’d be offended.
Love the blog. Just found it through an article in World magazine.
Dan Meyer
January 4, 2010 - 8:56 pm -Nah, not a dig. Just a statement of the fact that I don’t have a lot of age-level peers at my school. Which has been a bummer.
Karl
January 5, 2010 - 9:04 am -I can relate. When I first started teaching at my current location, I was the only teacher at the school whose tenure wasn’t measured in decades. And we were introduced with our years of experience/education at a parent-teacher assembly at the first of each school year.