List of social networks used in classrooms?

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Permalink Reply by DoonePlace on December 6, 2008 at 1:04pm

Here is one listing:

http://education.ning.com/

and there are few others.

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Permalink Reply by Sarita Yardi on December 6, 2008 at 1:35pm

Thanks Doone! I'm famliar with education.ning.com. It has a great list of social networks in education (http://socialnetworksined.wikispaces.com/) and as well as a number of getting started resources that Steve has posted. However, a number of these are networks for educators--I suppose the classroom networks themselves often have to be private.

My higher-level question is how do teachers and educators aggregate information about what works and doesn't across their sites? Is the Forum the only place where that body of knowledge is generated? And would a newcomer need to sort of browse through the Forums and try to glean a sense of successful approaches?

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on December 6, 2008 at 2:19pm

Reminder: Ning cannot be used with kids under 13.

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Permalink Reply by DoonePlace on December 6, 2008 at 2:22pm

Is this going to change in the future with the new Ning policy of having NO Adult Networks?

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on December 6, 2008 at 2:55pm

Doubt it--Steve H.said there will be other adult sites on ning (my words--no one in their right mind would risk having kids wander around!! haha)

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Permalink Reply by Sarita Yardi on December 6, 2008 at 3:01pm

re: age 13. My interest is from a research perspective (which may have been obvious from the tone of my question). We have to do IRB (human subjects) as part of our research, where working with kids under 13 is incredibly difficulty anyway. (Of course, even working with teens over 13, online, and in social networks, takes some carefully crafted proposals!). :)

There's a disconnect between research and teaching sometimes, I think, and I appreciate being able to browse Classroom 2.0 activity to try to bridge that, at least for my own work.

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Permalink Reply by DoonePlace on December 6, 2008 at 3:10pm

There is a Ning Directory at this URL that shows a few more Ning Education Sites:

http://networkcreators.ning.com/group/ningdirectory

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on December 8, 2008 at 8:23pm

The issue with youth under the age of 13 does not directly have to do with adult networks on Ning, but rather with the COPPA legislation. I am glad about the Ning change regarding adult networks, and think it will likely have a positive impact on the educational use of Ning.

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Permalink Reply by ddeubel on December 9, 2008 at 3:55am

We have a number of classrooms on our community, EFL Classroom 2.0. Ning offers the ability of multiple log in (I'm sure like so much else they will pull this eventually). A teacher can make a class account and all the students can use the same ID / PW.

I've sent a total of 6 emails, long and short to Ning regarding a search engine or directory so you can sort their networks. Still, after a year +, it is still the same old thing. A search pulls up any old thing. If you want to search for example about "Science". You have to spend hours wading through loads of empty sites to find anything of interest/note.... Maybe someone here can tell me the intelligence behind Ning's inability to make a Ning purpose search engine? Though I will note that the networks that did appear prominently on the basic search page -- were in some way allied with Ning. Perhaps that is the reason?

DD
http://eflclassroom.com

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Permalink Reply by Sean Nash on December 9, 2008 at 4:19pm

Here is a link within a Ning network at my school for the purpose of professional development.
Within, there are several learning networks on the Ning platform listed.
Most are pen to the public.
;-)

Sean

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