The Ning Thing
15 07 2009Originally posted Apr 3, 2009 9:36 AM by Steven Hall
 Most of you are probably familiar with Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, etc. These social-networking services are often viewed suspiciously by educators because students seem to spend an awful lot of time logged-in to these sites, and what are they doing on there anyway?… Well in some cases at least, students are using these new communication/collaboration tools for educationally-beneficial purposes. Whether you like them or are not-so-sure about them, virtual social-networks are here to stay. In fact, they are such a part of the digital-native lifestyle that it might be a good idea to think about how we can best encourage the constructive use of these powerful technologies. One Social networking service that is very popular with educators these days is called Ning. Unlike some of the other services, Ning allows users to create their own social network, specific to their interests or purpose. Similar to the way Google Sites works, these networks can be either open to the world, or private and shared only between specific users, such as your students. Here is a sampling of some educational Nings from other schools located mostly in our own region:
Nings are very easy to set up, and take just a little experimenting with to get the idea. Like most of the tools you’ll find on this blog, Ning is FREE. Think about how you might use a Ning in your teaching, and let me know if you’d like to know more.
Here’s a video that shows a bit more about how to set up your own educational social network on Ning: |
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