Will be presenting in about 10 minutes at the NICE mini conference here in Illinois. Doing a revamped version of my Top 10 Web 2.0 for Educators. Most radical change is that I don’t have an aggregator in there. Still kinda torn about that. Part of it is that time is limited, but another piece is that I’m not positive that it’s as relevant as it used to be. Considering people are aggregating via their inbox, via iGoogle, via My Yahoo, within the browser and more. There’s so many ways to subscribe, that I’m not positive it’s worth including an aggregator in this type of fast paced presentation.

Regardless, the current version is embedded below, and the examples I show for each site can be found here.

Let me know what you think! What did I get right, and what did I miss? Above all, please be sure to include WHY. Oh yeah, you can also add your thoughts to this Wall.

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In the past few years, I’ve been pretty darn lucky to be able to speak at quite a few conferences. I’ve also been blessed enough to include in my network dozens of people that do the same, whether it’s for a living or ‘on the side’. I’ve found that for the most part, presentations tend to fall into one of two categories.

1) What we (educators) should be doing.

2) What you can actually do right now.

I’ve always gravitated towards sessions in the former category. I like the ones that make me think, that encourage me to breakdown my ideas about what education means and h ow we do it, and then to rebuild them with new ideas and information. But rarely does that make much of a concrete difference in reality. When I do keynotes of this nature, I truly hope that I’m inspiring educators to reach farther, think bigger, and to become the very innovators that they currently look up to. But I always through in at least a few concrete ideas that people can do ‘on Monday’. Why? Because more often than not, those are the things that people scribble down and actually come back to.

I hear the same conversations on Twitter again and again. ‘We don’t need tools, we need pedagogy, we need understanding, we need new policies, we need leadership, we need political reform.’ And at the same time, I keep thinking to how many emails and comments I’ve received from people along the lines of, “Thanks so much for showing me Blabberize, I used it with my students and they were more engaged than they’ve been all year!” Will that change the education system in America? No. But for one classroom and one teacher on at least one day, it made a difference.

I’m not saying Blabberize is the most wonderful thing in the world. It just one of hundreds of Web 2.0 tools. But what is wonderful is that it made an old lesson new, that it energized a teacher who was then able to energize her students. To me, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ve heard so much criticism of ISTE over the past few days because so many of the sessions at NECC are what many consider to be ‘low level’. They’re discussions of tools, of toys, of websites and widgets. That won’t create any systemic reform in education. But if even a fraction of the teachers who attend learn a few new tricks and perhaps hear about a network like the DEN, Classroom 2.0, Plurk, or Twitter… isn’t that enough?

I like to think that my Top 10 Web 2.0 presentation has more in it than just a list of websites. I try to really focus in on why it’s important for teachers to delve into that world, how they connect together, and how to change their mindset it the way they use them. But more than anything, I hope to make them look simple, accessible, and within their grasp. And if a roomful of teachers see that presentation and leave thinking, “Wow, I really believe that I can do that stuff he was showing” then I’d consider it a success. Maybe I won’t be the one making broad sweeping changes to the US Education system. I can live with knowing that in a small way I’ve helped a group of teachers look at their lesson plans through new lenses, and maybe inspired them to do just one thing differently. If they can use some of these new technologies to make learning exciting again for the students, then I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Is that such a bad thing?

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I’ve had several requests via email for my Top 10 presentation from NECC, and realized that I should probably post it here. Of course, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!

So here’s a link to the presentation slides, such as they are. Most of the presentation is live demonstrations, so they’re only of limited value by themselves.

Here’s a link to the ISTE broadcast of the session. Video looks and sounds great, but they didn’t record what I was doing on the screen until 20 minutes in.

Then there’s my own personal broadcast of it using Procaster and Livestream. It has what’s happening on my screen throughout the entire presentation. However, the camera angle isn’t exactly the most flattering one I could have chosen

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ArtsCow.com is doing a sale right now on their custom Dog Tags. Using their designer, you can upload your own images and have them printed out on a dog tag. Normally, they cost 8.99, but through August 16th, they have a sale going on. If you use the coupon code 199DOGTAG, you can get a two sided dog tag with free shipping for $1.99. I don’t ordinarily post deals like this, but I think this could be a lot of fun for educators and it’s a pretty darn reasonable price.

So what can you do with a $1.99 dog tag?

• Create one for each of your students that has your School, Class Name, School contact info, and then their name and/or photo on the back. Be great for field trips, and early learners can use it to help learn how to spell/write their name.
• Random student grouping. Mix and match pictures and colors on each side, so you can use them for random grouping. For example, if you want to be able to do groups of 3, 4, 5, or 6 at different parts of the day, put 5 different animals on 3 different color backgrounds on one side, and then put 6 different shapes on 4 different colors on the other side. Then you can give each child a tag when they walk in, and call out groups as you need it. “All squares, come to the writing table.” “Yellow tags, go to music, green tags, stay with me.” You get the idea.
• Extension activities/centers. When students finish their assignment, they can pick an extension activity out of the bucket. Only put in as many tags in there as you can have at that activity or center. They were it as they play, and then put it back and pick a new one when they’re done.
• Job chart. List their jobs on the tags, and they can wear the tag to remind them what their job is until they do it. Then they just hang it up.
• Create permanent versions of Kevin Honeycutt’s Web2.0 keychain. A website on one side, a tip and a mentor’s email on the other.
• Bathroom passes, hall passes, Star of the day necklace, create yourself a cool keychain, etc. Hey, for 1.99, why not?
• Rewards for other teachers at your school. Create your own, Technology Teacher of the Month award! Give your colleagues a pat on the back for doing innovative things with technology in their classrooms. For $24 you could create one for every month this year.
• If you’re a geocacher, this would make a fantastic travel bug!

That’s about it off the top of my head. So let me toss the ball to you. What might you create custom dog tags for?

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Hi. My name is Steve Dembo. If you do a Google search for “Dembo” I have four hits on the front page. Considering all the famous Dembo’s, that’s quite a mediocre feat! And that’s how I identified myself to most people for the first few decades of my life.

About five years ago, I registered the domain name Teach42.com. Since then, there are thousands of people who know me primarily by that name. It has become my brand, my online identity, my signature. People know that if they see Teach42 on a website, that’s me.

This is nothing unusual though. Anybody who registers for just about any website has some sort of alter-ego now. An alias that they use to refer to themselves. Use the same one often enough, and you become quite attached to it.

How disappointed would you be if you had visited Twitter, intending to register, only to find that YOUR username had already been taken? Somebody else was online and communicating under the name that you had dibs on. Deliberate or not is irrelevant. First come, first served.

This has led to hundreds of thousands of URL’s being snatched up and squatted on. The cost is so low that it’s easy to grab them, either to hang on to or to put up for sale/auction. Heck, for only 8 bucks, I can register any open domain I want. 8 bucks is nothing, right?

Well, mull this one over. Twitter accounts are free. And considering that Twitter is now one of the largest social networking sites on the internet, are names on Twitter as valuable as domain names? Some sites seem to think so. People are snagging up Twitter names and putting them up for sale. After all, there’s only a finite amount of ‘good’ ones, right?

Of course, why stop at Twitter? While it may be the flavor of the month, who knows what will be replacing it. With new sites being launched daily, perhaps the next big thing went public this morning. How can you ensure that you will be able to get in there and get that perfect username, the same one that you used everywhere else?

Sites like UsernameCheck.com provide lists of Web 2.0 and social sites, and will check your username against all of them, to let you see where it has been registered and where it as available still. You could easily use that to see where you haven’t registered yet and start chasing windmills, registering your username on every site out there. But more will be coming out tomorrow, and the day after that. Can anyone really keep up?

Which leads me to KnowEm.com. It’s similar to UserNameCheck, but with one small twist. They’ll check where you’ve registered … and for a small fee they’ll register you on the rest. Then, for $20 a month, they’ll keep registering you on any new sites that they add, an estimated 15-20 per week.

I puked a little when I read that at first. Really?? I’m going to pay more than I currently pay for Tivo to have somebody register my name at every site that gets released? But then I started thinking about how bummed I’d be if I didn’t have Teach42 registered on Twitter. Or on Flickr. Or anywhere else for that matter. It’s my own personal brand. It has led to my current job, speaking gigs around the country, and an audience that I’m eternally grateful for. Is that worth a few bucks per month? Well, I haven’t plugged in my PayPal account yet, but I no longer think it’s such a crazy idea.

And that’s for me on a personal level. From a business standpoint, I think it’s almost a no-brainer. Why wouldn’t you want to maintain a tight leash on your brand and online identity?

So the question is, just how valuable is your online name? Can you put a price on it? And how upset would you be if it wasn’t available? What, if anything, would you spend to ensure that you maintain control of it and to be 100% positive that you have it reserved for you when the next big thing hits?

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The other day somebody referred to me as an expert in the field of internet safety. While it’s true that I’ve done many presentations on the subject and have some very strong ideas about it, it got me wondering exactly when I became ‘an expert’? At some point, there was a line drawn on the ground. On one side, I was a nut with some crazy ideas about kids and the internet. On the other side I was an expert voice that has spoken to thousands of people on the topic. When did this change miraculously occur?

If you’ve been a member of the blogosphere long enough, then you probably can play the “I remember when” game. For example, I remember when David Warlick recorded his first podcast (altho I can’t find it online anymore). I remember when Will’s blog engine of choice was Manila. Heck, I even remember when the term Web 2.0 was coined!

But the most interesting thing to me has been watching blogger after blogger after blogger sit down at the keyboard, type up a few posts invariably to a non-existent audience, and struggle to be heard. The incredible thing is how many of those people are now experts in every sense of the word. Particularly in my role overseeing the DEN community for Discovery, I see it happening constantly.

I’m not surprised that these people have become experts. I still believe that every teacher is a rock star waiting to happen. But what’s fascinating to me is being able to watch somebody who considers themselves to be an average Joe all of a sudden realize that they have hundreds of people following them in Twitter. Or that they got 10 comments on a blog post of theirs. Or that people from 5 different continents have visited their blog.

While some people have been launched into the spotlight in a blaze of glory, most find themselves struggling to find their audience. I vividly remember what it was like blogging in a perceived vacuum. It’s rough to keep posting when you feel nobody is listening. And yet so many educators have persevered and found their niche in the blogosphere, becoming ‘famous for 15 people‘.

I looked up ‘expert’ on Wikipedia, which is an interesting irony in itself. However, the post did contain an interesting tidbit called Germain’s Scale. It is “a measure of perception of employee expertise” and contains 5 objective expertise items (the first five) and 11 subjective items.

1. This person has knowledge that is specific to his or her field of work.
2. This person shows that they have the education necessary to be an expert in his/her field.
3. This person has knowledge about his/her field.
4. This person has the qualifications required to be an expert in his/her field.
5. This person has been trained in his or her area of expertise.
6. This person is ambitious about their work in the company.
7. This person can assess whether a work-related situation is important or not.
8. This person is capable of improving himself or herself.
9. This person is charismatic.
10. This person can deduce things from work-related situations easily.
11. This person is intuitive in the job.
12. This person is able to judge what things are important in his/her job.
13. This person has the drive to become what he or she is capable of becoming in his/her field.
14. This person is self-assured.
15. This person has self-confidence.
16. This person is an expert who is outgoing.

Some of them are rather fascinating and clearly debatable. Items 9 and 16 in particular. I’m not going to point fingers, but their are several prominent educational experts that I would hardly consider to be outgoing or charismatic. However, I do understand why these qualities would be included in the list.

Other items make perfect sense. In particular, the expert to be really does need to have the DESIRE to become an expert. If they don’t have that desire to share and be heard, then nobody will ever know about it. While many experts claim that they are blogging solely for their own personal reasons. Were that true, why not take it offline? If you’re making it public then at some level, even sub-consciously, you want it to be heard. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

One last rambling thought on the matter. There are so many people that I consider to be experts in my network. Some are experts at global collaborative projects, or experts at integrating mobile devices into the classroom, or experts at using Web 2.0 tools for classroom communication… Do their friends, families and colleagues have ANY idea that they are experts? Do they give them the recognition that they deserve? I know that among my friends and family, very few have any idea about my online activities, nor that I present in front of thousands of teachers every year.

Mark Twain once said that an expert is “an ordinary fellow from another town.” Is that really all it takes? Someone you don’t know saying something that feels right to you? Maybe it’s really as simple as that.

I’m very curious to know how you determine who qualifies as an expert. And is it really even all that important? Chime in and I will forever consider you to be an expert on the topic of ‘defining expertise’!

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