Congratulations must go out to Al Upton, who tonight received the CEGSA Educator Of The Year award for his efforts in bringing emerging technologies into his classroom here in Adelaide. I've been lucky enough to cross paths professionally with Al and will be co-presenting with him at the CEGSA Conference in July on the topic of Educational Blogging. That will be cool and I have a lot to learn from him, especially when it relates to getting kids engaged in their learning and making technology a way of accessing and implementing their learning. If you haven't checked out his blog, do so and read his articles section which contain descriptions of the practices he received the award for. For those readers who have been following the emergence of the nonscholae.org website which:

is a site devoted to the responsible use of blogs, photosharing, podcasts, web hosting, educational games, instant messaging and other social software in schools. Our students want to be web authors, create content and take part in distributed conversations, not just web consumers.

Al was a major contributor in the setting up stage and has helped clarify some of my thinking towards our internet filter system here in South Australia and its effect on teachers trying to utilise emerging technologies.
So, well done Al, and well deserved. If anyone feels inclined, drop your congratulations over on his blog. We need more Aussie bloggers like him joining the conversation.