About

The original 23 Things program, called Learning 2.0, was created by Helene Blowers at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenberg County (PLCMC) to encourage her co-workers to experiment with and learn about the new and emerging technologies that are reshaping the way people use the Internet today. It was inspired by Stephen Abram's article called, 43 Things I Might Want to Do this Year written after he'd discovered the personal goal-listing and sharing website called 43 Things.

I have to admit that I'm feeling a little professionally isolated in our small learning centre situated on a lane/drivethrough in the south zone. The view out my window is the back wall of the strip mall. Don't get me wrong -- we're a going concern, but the daily dialogue and exchange of ideas you get in a bigger mainstream school just isn't possible here, so I have put together this '23 Things Surrey-style' in an effort to reach out to old SD36 friends and to meet new people as well.

I thought it would be interesting to try learning these tools myself, and rather than struggle on alone it seemed more fun to share ideas, frustrations, and successes with colleagues and friends as we go along. After all, that is the essence of a 'social network' & school staffs know how to do that really well. Doing it online just takes it into the realm of Web 2.0.

If all this seems a little overwhelming, this was how I felt about using online tools 16 months ago.


Sources that I drew from include:

BLOGS:
Vermont's 23 Things
School Library Learning 2.0 (California School Libraries)
23 Things on a Stick (Minnesota)
Infopeople: Our 23 Web 2.0 Things (California State Libraries)

WIKIS: (if you aren't sure what these are now, you'll soon know!)
Webtools4U2Use
K-12 Learning 2.0 (Atlanta)

P.S. Holy upgrades, Batman! I haven't even launched this 2.0 program of discovery yet, and I've just found out that vs. 2.1 is up and running strong!

Invitation from Sue Hellman

Those of you who knew me when I was at Guildford Park will remember that my idea of being technologically savvy was knowing who in each class could hook up the video machine and how to get my marks in more or less on time. You will likely be surprised to see my name on this program, but for me the past year has been one of change and reinvestment in myself not only as a teacher, but as a learner.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2009 is to continue this journey into what for me is uncharted territory in Technoland. I hope some of you will join me as I try out these 23 Things and become more confident about negotiating my way around Web 2.0 before it morphs into Web 3.0.

Our first challenge in this process is to come to some understanding of just what Web 2.0 -- aka the Read/Write Web -- is. To help with that I am assembling a video that I hope you will find both entertaining and informative. Stay tuned.

The course will begin in the second week of January. Although it's a self-study program, I hope you'll be emailing me and others for help rather than sitting frustrated and alone at your machine. No one will have all the answers, but together we should be able to figure most of this out. The idea here is to connect and help each other. I hope we’ll be meeting in real time online using Elluminate, so you might want to consider getting a headset with mike that you can use during meetings.