Recently my 6th grade class finished a project. They had been working hard on reports about different countries, written on WordPress and set up as an educational web site. They were so proud of their work, but one little kiddo looked a bit unhappy. She had done great work, so I wasn’t sure why she seemed so down. When asked about it, she said “We never get to hang our work in the hall. No one knows how cool our work is.”

Now, if that doesn’t bum out a teacher, I don’t know what would. I decided it was time for some recognition for my hard working, creative 11 year olds. We hosted and “Open House” and invited staff and students to come view our work in the computer lab. We posted our blogs on edmodo and shared and commented. We high fived each other and shared a bag of Oreos. (Not in the lab of course, no one needs creamy filling on their keyboard!) The kids loved it, but I didn’t really feel it was enough. I wanted them to feel really special.

As luck would have it, I received an email from Edublogs. They were touting their upcoming Awards Program. My class learned to blog on Edublogs, and have just recently worked up to the more complicated WordPress blog format.  I shared the nomination information, and encouraged them to think about submitting their blogs for consideration. Since one cannot nominate his/her own blog, the kids decided they wanted me to do the honors. Although all 29 blogs are incredible, creative, exciting and fun, they wanted to vote on the nominees as a class. After much discussion, they chose the following submissions to represent their class.

Best use of facts:  http://sedgecarver.wordpress.com/  by Sedge Carver

Best use of RSS feeds:  http://africancountries.wordpress.com/  by Toni Fleming