If you have read any recent posts, you've noticed I'm working on a pretty good size project with classrooms from around the country. The project isn't over yet, but we should have things wrapped up by the end of next week.

I wrote a more detailed post about what I've learned while doing this project and you can read about it here. This post can be found on the Discovery Education Network Wisconsin blog, which I'm currently in charge of.

Please, visit the site, read the post, and comment here or there. Tell me what you think.

Steve Dembo believes that every teacher is a rock star. I'm not sure I agree 100%, but understand where he's coming from. I just think some people want to be background singers, not on lead vocals or guitars. With that being said, they are all important to ultimately creating beautiful music.

A few weeks ago, I presented a session on Building Your PLN (here's the wiki) with a friend and colleague, Rachel Yurk. We did this presentation as part of the Discovery Education Virtual Conference. Her district hosted a local event for the VC and we decided to give a live presentation to those who were interested. This was the first time I've done a presentation to people outside of my school and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Rachel and I get along very well, have a similar sense of humor and presentation style (I think) so it was very enjoyable. I hope the educators in attendance learned something and will use the information we showed to benefit themselves and their students. One thing I realized while we were presenting is that many of us have been using some great tools for a while, there are still many, many people just beginning the adventure.

If the attendees were anything like me, they probably figured Rachel and I knew a lot about what we were talking about - might have even considered us "experts." I think most conference session attendees consider the speakers to be pretty knowledgable about the topic they're presenting on. If they weren't, I guess they wouldn't be presenting, right? This leads me to another post Dembo recently wrote. Steve wonders when the average person becomes an expert at something. Does it take a large number of Twitter followers? Does it take many comments on a blog post? Does it have anything to do with giving presentations or speaking at conferences? I think it might be a combination of all of these. Steve lists the wikipedia definition of expert and makes a note that for someone to be an expert, they have to have the DESIRE to be an expert. I completely agree. There are a ton of top notch educators working with children everyday, but some don't want to considered experts or put themselves out there. They simply want to do their job. To some extent, I think this is a shame, because I think we should all be sharing the successes we have with students and learning from each other.

Back to the title of this post. I hardly think I'm a rock star or an expert in the ed tech world - I'm just trying to learn a lot as I enjoy the ride. I've been flattered when a few colleagues or members of my PLN have told me they read my blog (which has totally been on the back burner lately) or follow me on Twitter. It's very encouraging when someone mentions that they recommended me as someone to follow. I'm happy about that. I hope to continue sharing my knowledge (or lack thereof) with others. Rock Star? I doubt it. Expert? Probably not, but maybe I'm on headed in that direction, depending on your definition.

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.