My 11 from '11

Photo on Flickr by Stephen Heron

It is almost the end of the year and my blog will be 4 years old on 22nd January. What better way to celebrate than with a blogging challenge and one that will make me reflect on my past year's posts?

Adam Simpson posted this challenge in his blog. The idea is to look back at your last year's posts and choose 11 that you think are the best.

I was surprised to find that I actually wrote 28 posts in 2011, 10 more than the year before. I often suffer from blogger's blog and the trick for me is to take blogging challenges and attend workshops and to write about the experience.

So, let's do it:

1. I will start with My Birthday Special, almost a year ago. In that post I wrote about 2010 posts, so if you feel like going further into this blog's past, please do.

2. and 3. A Picture Tells... How Many Words Again and Why I Love Digital Storytelling are inspired by the Digital Storytelling workshop I was attending at the time. In these posts I tried out various activities I had learnt in the workshop.

4. What Is Your Computer Metaphor was written as homework for my Multiliteracies class, but this post is also very important to me. If I was to choose only one post from 2011, I would probably choose this one. I don't often rant, but I came very close to ranting here. I will say no more.

5. Free Tools Challenge #4 - Classtools. The Free Tools Challenge was really great for my blogging. I wrote 12 posts during this challenge and it was difficult to choose only three here. I chose this one, because Classtools are just amazing and I believe everyone should know about them.

6. Free Tools Challenge #12 - Animoto. I was familiar with this tool before the challenge, so I tried to explore Animoto further in this post. I think the result is quite interesting...

7. Free Tools Challenge # 15 - Livebinders. Everyone should know about the wonderful Livebinders. They can be used in the classroom in so many ways.

8. How My PLN Came to Be is a tribute to my Personal Learning Network. You guys deserve it.

9. Get to Know Each Other is a lesson plan, or rather a list of warmers and introductory activities that can be done at the beginning of the school year.

10. Some Important Tricisions is about an online workshop I attended this autumn, but it is also about a useful little tool called Tricider.

11. The Tree: Some Video Activities is again a lesson plan. I won't tell you what it is about, see for yourselves.

So, here we are, many workshops and blogging challenges later. My blog is almost four years old and it is the end of the year. So, let me sign off with the same words I used in my last 2010 post:

It was a good year. The next one will be even better.


Photo on Flickr by Chris Jones


This was true of 2011. And 2012 is going to be just amazing, I know that.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, dear PLN. Thank you for letting me learn with you in 2011.

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