Hosting and open source software have come a long way in the past year. Costs are down and easy functionality are up. Now is the time for all educators to develop into “cutting edge-ucators.” Combining smart technology with smart integration sets us all on this journey into the Web’s second decade (2nd10). To help this happen, Tom March has made available a chapter from a handbook on setting up your own ClassAct Portal (pdf download). This step-by-step guide has been very popular at conferences and workshops.

The New York Times reported on July 12, 2005 about We’re not Afraid. On July 7, the day of the terrorist bombings in London, Alfie Dennen posted a picture of the London skyline and the text: “Show the world that we’re not afraid of what happened to London today, and that the world is a better place without fear.�

The site, built in WordPress, could have gone up in 10 minutes and has had 4 million visitors and a New York Times article written about it. This is what’s called “going viral.� Word spreads as quickly as a virus because one persons tells another, they tell others, who tell others, then it hits the media and you and I are visiting it. Not a bad example of how easy it would be for a class to tap into the moment… See ClassActPortal.com or get the tutorial to help your students do something similar.

This initiative began over a year ago as the Drive for 2005. It lived at http://drivefor2005.org and presented Tom March’s systemic integration of strategies such as Hotlists, Class Act Portals, Subject Samplers and WebQuests. The idea all along was that such comprehensive transformation of teaching and learning would take much longer than a year. This new “2^nd 10″ Web site supports a systemic vision that respects that every educator is an individual learner and that professional development needs to be learner-centric.