5th/6th Grade Class Denided AD-Free Ning - What Now?

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Permalink Reply by DoonePlace on August 6, 2008 at 6:32pm

You should ask this question on http://networkcreators.ning.com/

I have seen some discussion of Ning for Kids on that site but I cannot find the discussions right now.

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Permalink Reply by Amy Cobb on August 6, 2008 at 8:05pm

I believe the students have to be thirteen years old to participate in a ning.

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Permalink Reply by DoonePlace on August 6, 2008 at 8:13pm

You are right the comment I was thinking of was from Mariko and it was about the age 13 requirement.

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on August 7, 2008 at 6:14am

Most "free" hosted solutions are out of reach for children under 13 because COPPA restricts the information that they can collect from children under 13.

I'm afraid the same applies to blogger:

"You must be at least thirteen (13) years of age to use the Service. Google reserves the right to refuse service to anyone at any time without notice for any reason."

I have always advocated setting up free and open source software on either the school's server or on rented server space. This can be done for little money and protects the privacy of the children. You also should have this reviewed by your tech committee.

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Permalink Reply by Jack Olmsted on August 7, 2008 at 8:33am

Since the open house is tonight, the teacher set-up classroom blogs on classblogmeister and edublogs. Over the next two weeks, she will select one of the services for the school year.

Here is a post in 2006 from at third grade teacher that makes a strong case for classblogmeister.

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on August 7, 2008 at 9:19am

She needs to use fictitious personal information for the kids if she is going to stay within the law. Classblogmeister actually suggests doing so.

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Permalink Reply by Victor Ramon on August 7, 2008 at 11:34pm

I guess it's a little late, but you could use Studeous (http://www.studeous.com). It's like Ning, but tailored for education.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Stein on August 9, 2008 at 4:49pm

And it's ad free.

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Permalink Reply by Diane Moline on August 9, 2008 at 3:01pm

That may be the reason our district, too, just across the board denies access to Nings, even these great professional ones. It is a pretty conservative cautious district in these regards, denying access to elementary classes (and their teachers, without unblocking-paperwork required) that are open to middle school and above, requiring permission to access the really good professional blogs like David Warlick, Bit by Bit, Will Richardson, etc. (the several of which I have burned rubber getting unblocked) because it is a blog. I could not even get permission to use Class Blogmeister, although we were using SWIFT, a regional Moodle-like (I suppose) program, and access to the discussion boards was not even password protected. We finally last year got our own class blog program developed by one of our technology people who used WordPress anyway....As a technology peer coach, it's been frustrating for me to try to open up these wonderful professional development places to other teachers at every level. It is particularly annoying that such places like Classroom2.0 and its similar genres are really not available to most teachers in the places they work.

I believe this is one of the biggest challenges we have as coaches or evangelists of good use of classroom technology. One of my go-arounds is to use iWeb since the "blogs" are buried within and the automatic blockers don't evidently recognize it. It's hard to keep up at a PC school, but I do my best at midnight at home.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin on August 17, 2008 at 8:20am

What is I have kids use a teacher account on ArtSnacks and homeschool kids use a parent account?

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Permalink Reply by Chris ONeal on August 17, 2008 at 1:45pm

What about a tool like imbee.com = http://www.imbee.com/

~Chris

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Permalink Reply by Kevin W on August 18, 2008 at 1:57pm

I am not intending to start a food fight here, but if she is adventurous she could always switch to Drupal. Drupal has the following advantages over Ning:

1) It is open source (she has complete control over it and does not need to follow the policies of another company)
2) She can run it on her own school domain (it can also provide the entire school website)
3) Drupal has much more flexibility and customization than Ning

Drupal of course has the following disadvantages:

1) Ning installs easily and is ready right away. Drupal is more complex and therefore takes more work and time to set up (which may or may not be an added cost).
2) Understanding what modules will be needed can also be daunting if you don't know what they do (some modules that would be an asset to a SNS would be: CCK, Views, Organic Groups, Buddy List, Panels 2 (and Og_Panels), Advanced Profile Kit, My Site, Gallery 2, there are others listed at: http://drupal.org/node/109248 that may be of interest).
3) If the school does not already have its own domain name/web server, this would be an added cost.

Personally, I like the control I have with Drupal, but depending on her situation, it may or may not be a viable option.

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