NING as a Teaching Platform?

I have really enjoyed my experience with all of you on Classroom 2.0, and I thought I would push myself further in my thinking by using the platform to organize my resources for a graduate class I will be teaching a number of times this summer. I will be working with teachers at all levels of tech experience, but my guess is that none of them will have used anything like this. Do any of you in my Classroom 2.0 network have any bits of wisdom to share? Here is what I have used in the past, a simple website.This is what I created in a very short time, more coming as I prep for the start of class.

Tags: NING, camp, platform, socialnetworking, teaching, tech, with

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Permalink Reply by Adam Babcock on March 28, 2011 at 6:24pm

Would you be willing to send me an invite? I'm presenting Ning to a group of educators this week, and I could use all the student work I can get...

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Permalink Reply by Mary Hricko on June 26, 2007 at 1:31pm

I'm planning on teaching with the NING platform. I am using it now to facilitate a learning community for faculty development and for organizing an online conference.

Since we all can't make f2f meetings on a regular basis, I figured this is a good tool to use.

Since I need help finding an open source gradebook (Anyone?) I'm not certain how I would set up a gradebook in ning. I am not too thrilled with the idea of having to create one from scratch that ensures the same type of security as a CMS tool. I'm thinking I'll use ning for everything, but a drop box for assignments.

Ning allots just about everything that a CMS tool has: discussion forums =discussion board, space to post links, lecture notes, audio lectures, visuals, media etc.
I can use the group tool for group assignment spaces--the individual pages for student portfolio pages--I see great potential in this tool.

However, there's the great FERPA privacy issue---how do I ensure that student content is private? I'm not so certain how I will secure that.

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Permalink Reply by pete whitfield on June 26, 2007 at 2:29pm

Gradebook - not sure this is exaclty what you want but have you tried a spreadsheet in google docs? I've not seen anything free and more sophisticated but that doesn't mean it's not out there! Privacy - you can choose to make your ning network private when you create one, though I think everyone in that community can see every other user's material.

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Permalink Reply by Lino Oliveira on June 27, 2007 at 3:04pm

Hi Meg

I teach technologies at an university in Vila do Conde, Portugal.
I have all my classes at our Moodle Platform.

Next academic year I plan to use several web 2.0 tools to complement Moodle activities.

I wil use
- Moodle for content
- Moodle, wikis, blogues for assessments (works in group)
- Del.icio.us to suggest sites
- Slideshare to publish powerpoint presentations
- Flickr anf YouTube to store multimedia content to be referenced

Social Networks as Ning will be used to discussions and communities basically for motivation of students. These are tools students are accustomed.
Ning is interesting because its easy to permalink a reply or subscribe a discussion using a RSS feed.

I am thinking also in experiment Second Life.

As you can read in my ning profile, I am doing a PhD with this subject.
So I am also interested in a research paper :-)

I would like to suggest two important reports about using Web 2.0 in Education:

MILLER, Paul ? What is Web 2.0? Ideas, Technologies and Implications for Education. JISC Technology and Standards Watch, February 2007.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf

THE NEW MEDIA CONSORTIUM and EDUCASE LEARNING INICIATIVE ? The Horizon Report 2007 Edition. California, 2007. ISBN 0-975087-4-5.
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007_Horizon_Report.pdf

Regards from Portugal.

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Permalink Reply by Meg Ormiston on June 27, 2007 at 8:02pm

Wow!
Thanks for joining us! There are number of people in our group researching various Web 2.0 applications. Many of them are her in our group and some are in classroom 2.0 (also in the Ning platform)
Thank you for the ideas for future reading, I look forward to learning more!
BTW< please join me in Second Life, strange, BUT I see the power of education!!
Thanks for joining our discussion!
meg

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Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on June 28, 2007 at 3:36am

Wow
That Paul Miller paper was wonderful on many different levels. It really provides a solid grounding into the architecture of the Web 2.0 world and then considers what may come next.
Thanks for sharing, Lino.

Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Nadine Norris on June 29, 2007 at 7:10am

Hi Meg,
I checked out your tech camp ning. It is really great. I'm glad it worked out so well for your class. It seems that you have really "inspired" a great group of teachers. I made a post, I couldn't resist. I hope I wasn't intruding. Based on your success, I think I would try using ning as a professional development tool. I'd be interested to know what you would change next time around.

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Permalink Reply by Meg Ormiston on June 29, 2007 at 8:21pm

Thanks Nandine,
So amazing! I just wrapped up week 2 of tech camp a still can't believe the amazing products produced by my class. I will say, I love NING!!
I love the ease of uploading video, images and files, from a teaching perspective it was wonderful!! More when I rest!!
meg

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Permalink Reply by Simon on October 2, 2007 at 1:07am

Hey Meg,

Is there anything that you thought ning lacks that would have made it better?

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Permalink Reply by Simon on November 18, 2008 at 11:16pm

You may find that setting up a private classroom at www.clivir.com to suit your needs.

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Permalink Reply by Scott on January 9, 2009 at 12:55pm

Hi Meg,

I really would love any feedback you had from doing this post - Did you teach the class on Ning and how did it work? How was it recived and did you and the participants find it improved the overall quality of the instruction significantly?

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Murphy on January 18, 2009 at 5:20pm

Just completed a semester of HS students using NING.. It went rather well, it was a study. Students commented on the whole process in discussions throughout the semester. We listened to podcasts about social networks and teachers using social networks, embeded every tool we could think of etc.. As with most of web 2.0 it was overwhelming for the students. They were excited yet bothered at the same time since their facebook lives were most prevalent after hours. It was a great place to hold a class yet the social outcasts were outcasted and received little contact.

WE did things like posting/embeding the MLK I a have a dream speech/video and engaging in discussion, posting/embeding a VoiceThread and sharing content, and screencasting then embedding the content back into Ning. It helped students with the neat things you can do with social networks. It kept us connected

I'd sure do it again. For what I do, a tech/web2.0 teacher it made a ton of sense. Would I teach a math class that way? perhaps.. Formerly a Foreign Language instructor, this would be useful there too.