A social network for your school

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Permalink Reply by Ron Lombard on May 15, 2009 at 9:59am

WE have started a Ning at Chatham University / this is for the students that have graduated in education and no long have contact through the University portal - this allow us to keep in touch
- providing ongoing employment information
- keep track of employment of recent graduates
- share ideas and photos online to keep up a feeling of family with those that have left the program but have insights to offer others

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Permalink Reply by Doug Walker on May 15, 2009 at 10:04am

I just started using Ning with Students. I setup a ning for our grade 12 English Honors course. The teacher wanted to have students maintain their own blogs as journals. She wanted to be able to view them all in one place. A ning site is perfect for this. As i introduced the features of the network the teacher started to realize all of the other opportunities. We are meeting next week to expand its use.

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Permalink Reply by Kabari Hendrick on May 15, 2009 at 10:21am

I love the comments in this thread. One of the reasons I created my company was to create a product that does what this thread is about, but tailored to suit the needs of a school.

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Permalink Reply by Karen Saad on May 15, 2009 at 12:45pm

Yesterday in one of our classes the kids were asked to post/reply on a forum - we thought they would love it. All they did was complain, saying "if it was facebook" it would be cool. So my thought is, lets give them a 'facebook', that we control and can harness for good (i.e. - education).

The teachers are afraid to use a lot of these web 2.0 technologies, they don't know why they should use them, and they don't think they have time. The kids on the other hand always have facebook on their mind... so why don't we harness that? The teachers will see the kids using it all the time and then see the potential for tying it into the classroom?

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Permalink Reply by Hans Feldmeier on May 15, 2009 at 1:04pm

Hi Karen,
yes I do - but it is a Ning Network for several schools: eTwinning DigiSkills
In Europe there is a possibility to interact with internet on special topics
Have a look at this Ning eTwinning DigiSkills!
My greetings from Germany!
Hans
PS: I´ve got my own Ning Network Web2Class

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Permalink Reply by Merle Hall on May 15, 2009 at 9:12pm

I like your Ning etwinning site. I wish our policies let us use some of the tools like video and podcasting. Right now I mainly use ning as a hybrid for my face to face students. It works well to motivate them. All I have to do is suggest that they might lose their page and they are practically falling over each other to get the work done.

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Permalink Reply by Merle Hall on May 15, 2009 at 9:07pm

I use Ning to have my students blog, do assignments, get homework, turn in homework, do research and have parents check up on grades etc. We have about 10 out of 22 teachers with their own groups on the site. I have tried other blogs but like the ning forum style of layout. We limit what the kids can do; no video, music or chat. I would like to use these tools but the tech policies are strict for good reasons.

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Permalink Reply by Merle Hall on May 15, 2009 at 9:38pm

Although I have had a Ning network for a couple of years I had a difficult time at first. It was hard transitioning from the face to face to the online. The online format took more time and I had difficulty wording the lessons so they would be understandable. The benefits were great in that students and teachers were able to communicate better. Students who would normally not participate in a face to face class discussion would on the blog. It is a good tool to motivate and because you can send homework files to ning and retrieve them easily it became my method for moving towards a paperless classroom. We did have issues with the tech department blocking the site at first, but after Ning eliminated the redirect for logging in as an administrator that issue was solved.
Now the largest problems I have is when kids say they posted their assignments but it is not on the blog. I just tell them if I can't see it on the blog, the assignment is not turned in. We also have to police the students. I teach 6th, 7th, and 8th grade so they tend to overdo the photos. I limit them to 10. They also cannot post personal pictures, video, sound or add applications to their pages. The tech department had real issues when the students started using playlist from playlist.com or buddy poke. Those applications apparently use a lot of bandwidth. With up to 30 kids on at a time my lab internet connection slowed to a crawl. One very good benefit is that now kids will work on homework when they are absent. I tell them and their parents that the blog is accessable 24-7 so they can get their assignments, ask questions, and turn in work even if they are gone from school. I only have about 1 percent of students who cannot access the internet at home or through the library. For this reason I still do not use the blog as my sole method of assigning work.

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