Group items tagged

ompelling affordances for group collaboration

Participants can sign up or sign in and set up profiles for any particular Ning, parts of which carry over to other Nings, achieving familiarity with minimal repetition of data entry

crucial components of many educators’ PLNs

Nings have c

Webheads in Action used to enroll participants in its free bi-annual WiAOC international online conferences in a Moodle, but for the last one, moved the community over to a Ning (http://webheadsinaction.ning.com/). This Ning now has over 350 members.

Because Nings were free and robust for collaboration, they were an ideal tool for educators seeking to jump-start communities on little or no funding.

Alec Couros sees this kind of thing happening more and more in the crystal ball future and suggests that schools and educators would be better off investing in self-hosting using FOSS, free and open source software (Couros, 2010).

general consternation

a number of issues

One is for how long Internet users can expect free services

other side of the coin is the nature of teaching, where hard-pressed teachers with little time and less budget tend to cobble together whatever resources they can muster

Monetization is rarely a consideration for teachers and educational technology specialists

, whose main aim is to find platforms that will support learning through sharing.

Pearson, who have offered to sponsor Nings for educators at the Mini level, the lowest level of Ning

almost all continents on the planet are excluded from the deal

Kevin Hodgson has been writing some interesting posts about the Ning thing.

the only reliable alternative to Ning is to host your community yourself, or at a trusted institution

http://tinyurl.com/alternatives2ning).  This document remains the most comprehensive source of advice on what to do about replacing Ning that exists anywhere on the Internet

Alec Couros (2010) decided to crowdsource some answers

back up your Ning

there are a number of sites offering Ning-like look and feel which will (attempt to) import your content, or some of your content, from Ning

designed to work as a social-network portal for Yahoo and Google Groups.

see: http://webheads.grouply.com/

A tool that works well for capturing blog content is Posterous

another free site that lets you set up a Portal with features similar to those of Ning.

another social networking portal which will do much the same thing

Other sites encourage you to restart your community afresh

Stevens, V. (2010). The Ning thing. TESL-EJ, Volume 14, Number 1. Retrieved on today’s date from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej53/ej53int/.

Posterous Targets Ning

Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning theory for the digital age. Elearnspace. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.

Good, R. and Bazzano, D. (2010). Ning Alternatives: Guide To The Best Social Networking Platforms And Online Group Services. MasterNewMedia May 3rd, 2010. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://www.masternewmedia.org/ning-alternatives-guide-to-the-best-social-networking-platforms-and-online-group-services/.

If you wish to write anonymously on a Ning thing document, you can do so at Alec Couros’s crowdsourced Google Doc here: http://tinyurl.com/alternatives2ning

Multiliteracies

David Carr, writing in the New York Times has written an excellent article describing the growing impact of Twitter and explaining why it is set to become part of the infrastructure of the Internet.

If you’re interested in what’s new in your field, then Twitter is a great place to start.

When it comes to finding a tool to get a job done Twitter is without equal – Prezi, Animoto, Wallwisher, Glogster Edu, Dropbox – I got the tip about all of them first on Twitter

If you’re looking to integrate the Internet into your teaching, then your first port of call on Twitter is #edtech.

real-time search of posts about educational technology

The hashtag (#) is used by Twitter as a filter and will take you directly to current posts about that topic

the jewel in Twitter’s crown for educators is #edchat.

The  biggest change has been in the way I meet and communicate with people in my PLN.

Most of the resources are in the form of links

social bookmarking

Discussion groups

Nings are like subject area resource rooms in a large school.

They’re social networks connecting teachers with common interests. In addition to discussion forums, members keep blogs, share resources, and plan group activities.

attended more conferences than ever before, but travel much less