A huge congratulations to all EGUSD students who participated in the recent #UnfollowBullying campaign. Your student-led initiative caught the attention of an international audience, earning a nomination for the 2012 Edublog Awards for the Best Twitter Hashtag. At last night’s Edublogs Virtual Awards ceremony, #UnfollowBullying, out of 116 nominations in this category, moved from nominee  into the top 5 – and by a significant margin – was declared the winner!

The Edublog Awards are an annual, community-based program that recognizes and celebrates excellent practice in the use of blogs and social media to facilitate teaching and learning. Nominations in various categories are submitted from any country, in any language, from educators working with any age group or type of learner, including learner-led initiatives.

The annual Edublog Awards competition started in 2004 with a focus on blogging-related categories.  Over the years, with the emergence of new social media technologies, such as Twitter, the categories have changed. In 2009, the Best Twitter Hashtag (#) category was added.

Last year, Superintendent Steven M. Ladd, Ed.D., asked his student advisory committee to select a digital citizenship campaign topic, create a name and design a campaign. Students selected cyberbullying as the topic of focus. They brainstormed a number of campaign names before selecting #UnfollowBullying. The students shared that Twitter has fast become a favorite social media tool for teens and that the term hashtag (#) is now part of their everyday language. #UnfollowBullying clearly resonated with the global audience of voters.

We are sure this award will act as a catalyst to keep the campaign momentum moving forward. A special thanks to all of those who supported and voted for #UnfollowBullying.