Winner of the Guldäpplet jury's special prize

“Micke Kring, IT educator at Årstaskolan in Stockholm, has been awarded the Guldäpple jury’s special prize. A prize the jury can award to ‘one or more people who have carried out long-term, significant efforts to promote learning supported by IT and media’.”

Precisely how the press release from DIU that went out an hour ago begins. Just in time for my fortieth birthday, having spent sixteen of those years working with digitalization in the school world (and a bit before that, teaching seniors to create websites and surf the web), I have the honor of receiving this honorary prize for long and faithful service. :) Since this is the first time (and probably the last) I win an award for what I do, it stands to reason that I have to thank a bunch of fantastic people. As the recipient of the prize I must first and foremost thank the person/people who nominated me. To imagine that there are people out there who think I’m worth a prize and even took the time to write a nomination warms an old man’s heart. It may, of course, be that nobody nominated me, but I’ve thanked them anyway. Better be safe than sorry. Then I must of course thank the incredibly competent and nice jury who chose completely correctly! :) (How many smileys is one allowed in a blog post?)

But those who deserve the biggest thanks as usual are my fantastic colleagues at Årstaskolan. Without you, no Guldäpple!

I intended to write this post yesterday and started it yesterday (i.e., when the prize became public), but the most amazing thing happened. Phone, computer and tablet started buzzing and spitting out a lot of notifications from near and far with loads of congratulations. Several hundred emails, tweets, Facebook comments, texts and other messages meant I stopped working from around 14:00 to respond to everyone. And I hope I haven’t missed thanking anyone. A big thank you to you all! You really made my day — and you’re continuing to do so today. Normally I’m horribly bad at receiving praise, but for this I will make an exception and actually accept all the kind words without squirming a bit awkwardly. When this is over I’ll crawl back behind the controls where I belong and leave the spotlight. My role is as an enabler for others. That’s where I’m happiest and where I can work hard and focused on what makes a difference. If I take a quick look back over all these years at Årstaskolan, a lot has happened with the technology, but some things remain the same: the collaboration, the core values, the view of the students and respect for their work, the hard work and the desire to always aim high.

Again, a big thank you to you all! If you want to meet me in person I’ll be at Skolforum on Monday of week 44. That’s when I’ll get to go up on stage and receive my prize.