From Paul McKenzie's "Reflection on 23 Things"

When Jennie and I started wracking our collective Brain2.0 for 23 Things content, our aim was to come up with tools that would:

1. not scare participants away before they started
   
2. be immediately relevant to our lives
3. create a sense of community through collaboration
   
4. have enough depth and scope to be useful for teaching and learning
   
5. be packed with transferable skills
6. be in the right order to take advantage of these skills
7. have a "long tail" in the cyber life-cycle
8. give a glimpse at how students all over the world connect
9. help get our heads around new ideas shaping education and society
10. enable participants to independently discover tools, concepts, ideas, and advice
    
11. encourage participants to develop personal learning networks
12. have enough hooks to entice others to participate next year

Believe it or not, we had to leave a whole lot of stuff out. My personal favorite, Diigo, got cut early on, while other quite relevant tools didn't even make the shortlist.

I'm not sure whether it was by accident or design, but Jennie's use of a collaborative progress chart and learning partners not only encouraged us all to get our A's into G, but modeled elegantly how "the cloud" can be used to facilitate student learning.

Jennie and I got as much out of this as we put in. We fully appreciate that some colleagues took giant leaps of faith to start 23 Things, let alone complete and eventually "own" them. It has brought teachers closer together, and that many are no longer fearful of the "T" word is very satisfying. It has been energizing to witness participants forge ahead, integrating these new tools and concepts into their teaching, learning, and personal lives.