The long and the short of it

We've had the Oscars, the Tonys, and of course, for education bloggers, the Eddies. What next? Well, you'll just love the Shorty Awards. It's a celebration of all that is great, whacky or downright weird on the real-time service Twitter.

This is the second year the Shorties have run, and frankly it's all a lot of great fun. The strapline on the Shorty Awards Website says: 'Honoring the best producers of short and real-time content'. There are several 'official' categories including Arts, Music, Humor, Celebrity, Education and Tech. I'm particularly interested in the last two as they relate to the themes of my blog. But it's a lot of fun watching Twitter users scrabbling and canvassing to try to gain votes from their fellow twits, so they can edge their way to the top of the 'leader board' in each category. There is even an unofficial category emerging, I see. It's the 'egocentric' category and seems to be awarded to those twits who think a little too highly of themselves, or who are perhaps just a little too enthusiastic in trying to solicit votes.

Here's the hilarious bit: Anyone can devise a new category to nominate someone. If enough people do the same thing, that category then becomes 'official', and an award is made for it. I can see people's imaginations running wild now. How about categories for 'boring', 'drivesbadly', 'lunatic', 'mostlyasleep' or 'drunkard'. I gave @davecormier a nomination in 'convolution' for his meandering but brilliant theory on rhizomatic learning. I don't think anyone has picked up on the irony of it yet. I also gave Tom Caswell (@tom4cam - one of the tallest men I have ever encountered) a nomination in the 'tall' catagory, which for the shorties is ... well, appropriate I think. He got it. :-)

I'm flattered to have received 8 votes for @timbuckteeth so far in the 'education' category, which puts me in 18th joint equal place alongside such luminaries as @ollie_otter. How good is that? I'm on a par with a river dwelling rodent, but not half as cute. Excellent.

I don't stand a cat's chance in hell of winning anything of course. There are just too many great people (and some awesome ones too). Currently heading the leaderboard in the education category by a mere 1750 votes ahead of place two, is some bloke called Brother Eli Soriano (who should perhaps more fairly be placed in a 'religious' or 'preacher' category to give the teachers a chance. He also appears to have at least 7 accounts - check him out Shorty Awards). Some nutcase who will remain nameless (@simfin) has just nominated me in the 'humor' category. That's a laugh, that is. How about several of you nominating me in a new category - let's call it 'obscurity'. If enough of you vote for me, it may turn out to be the most ironic award of the whole Shorties. There's also an interview for you to complete which is displayed next to your buddy pic. Do have fun with the Shorties - 'cos that's exactly what they are.

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