A while back, I wrote about claiming my online identity. I purchased www.chadlehman.com For now, it simply links to this blog, but over the summer, I hope to expand it a little more.

Recently, a fellow (non-tech) blogger, John Pearson, did the same. If you haven't checked out Mister Teacher's site, I think you should - it's usually good for a nice laugh. In addition, to his blog, John writes a column for Education.com.

Quick side note - when I first started my blog, John was the first person to leave a comment and welcome me to the world of blogging.

I was going use Web 2.Ohhh No for the title of this post, but decided not to. No particular reason, but both seem to express my thought on the thousands of Web 2.0 tools that are out there.

The bottom line? There are simply too many to discover, too many to keep track of, and too many to learn. There are lot of tools that probably (maybe) can do some pretty neat things, some with great educational potential, but I'm not sure how we can all keep up.

In the past, I've heard about a few new tools that others suggested and used, with success. I signed up for a bunch, took a peek, and then forgot about them. Does that sound familiar to you? There are definitely some tools that intrigue me, more for personal use than professional. Jott and Don't Forget the Milk are two that I think I might actually use, but simply haven't taken the time to set things up properly and take advantage of what these tools might do. Today, I canceled my Jott account. There are probably several others that I signed up for but don't even remember.

This brings me to Plurk. I like Plurk - the threaded discussions are great, but have realized over the last several weeks, that I don't miss it. I haven't been using Plurk nearly as much as I used to and haven't felt the need to check. Twitter, which I've been using longer, is meeting my PLN needs. Twitter seems to be growing as well - I think there's more buzz about it and I'm often checking my email to find new followers. Sure, some of it is spam, but for the most part, more educators are on board. Twitter is not only keeping me connected with several hundred educators, but it's keeping my updated with non-educational news as well. I like how some of my local news stations and sports teams are using Twitter. I like how I can follow some national sites and even some of my favorite tv shows. Twitter is keeping me more connected than Plurk was. I've also recently discovered TweetDeck, which I really, really like. We all have to find what works for our needs, and as much as I enjoyed my time using Plurk, I'm sort of sad to say, that I'm done with it.......for now.

I'm a new member of the Wisconsin Discovery Education Network Leadership Council (WI DEN LC) as a blogger. While my blogging skills aren't nearly as good as the blogs I read, my hope with this new adventure is that I grow as a writer and can share some of the great things going on in the world of educational technology, whether it's related to Discovery or not. I don't plan on cross posting very often, but I may share something once in a while. There are a lot of great things going on in the world of education - with and without technology. I hope to continue using this blog to share, learn, and question.

If you have a few minutes, take a quick peek at the WI DEN LC blog. My first post is a little get-to-know-me. If you don't know me, read it. The second post is about a little project on of our fourth graders is working on.

There are a bunch of pretty interested Twitter applications available. I've recently started using TweetDeck, which I really love. Thanks to Beth Knittle, I came across Twitter Mosaic. As you can see below, this site creates a mosaic of your Twitter friends. Here's mine.

Get your twitter mosaic here.