ning for students

Comment by Ginger Lewman on July 11, 2007 at 9:35pm

You know, this is a conversation that many of us are having and pondering, but it seems that it's too easy to click on just the plain Ning site and get a screen full of boobies, if I can be blunt.

I'm wondering if we buy into a network from Ning, if we can remove some or all of those "back to Ning links" which lead to curious students getting us into trouble!

Comment by Tammy Moore on July 12, 2007 at 6:38pm

I teach online chemistry to homeschoolers using Moodle and an Elluminate online classroom. We are using NING for our class social tool.

I did a presentation Tuesday on how NING works and posted the link for them to sign up. Literally, not two minutes had passed before I linked to the member page to see how many had made it in OK and found that three or four of them had not only navigated to their member page, but had already set their own template up and had uploaded avatars and music to their member page player. These kids are not internet social newbies. This is their world.

Kids these days know the net backwards and forwards without us. They live and breathe it. It seems kind of silly to me to be so worried about blocking them from sites when in their own free time at home they surf and know the net better than we do. My teens and I discuss the net quite a lot. It is a family passion. They are quite open about the frustrations of image searches that turn up images they find off-search and inappropriate, of site offers that are just spam-list generators, of e-mail that is infuriatingly difficult to weed through because of bot-mailing, etc. They have had to learn the ropes of avoiding the pitfalls of the net -often before I have even been aware of the pitfalls existing myself. I am proud to see maturity in their outlook and handling of the net. We cannot protect them forever, but we can give them a good foundation for judging what is good and safe from what is harmful or a lure.

Comment