Choosing a platform for online teacher collaboration - suggestions?

I'd love your input on a project our district is working on right now. We want to create a space online for teachers in the district to share resources and discuss best practices. We need to be able to post resources (handouts, links, etc), describe them, tag them, and discuss. We want the material to be easily organized. Our primary goal is that the site will build communication and collaboration within the district but we also hope that as time goes on we can encourage participants to expand their personal learning network beyond the district as well. The site will also be used to supplement face-to-face professional development taking place during the year.

Do you have any suggestions on what platform would be the best fit for us? We've been looking already at wikis or a ning - I think wikis would make it easier for us to organize the information as it is posted, and a ning would make it easier for us to have discussions. I'm curious whether maybe there is something else out there that might be an even better fit. We want something free - we'd like to avoid hosting fees - and we want a super easy set up that preferably does not require hosting on our own servers.

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Tags: ning, onlinepd, pd, wikis

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by C. Hutcheson on March 25, 2009 at 11:47am

What a great idea! I don't have any suggestions (new to all this), but I'll follow this one for advice!!!
Clair

Permalink Reply by Kirsten on March 25, 2009 at 12:32pm

We are actually trying to do the same thing right now at our school. Unfortunately, nothing we found really fit our needs so we are in the process of building something ourselves. We looked at quite a few platforms though and maybe one of them will work for you. Here are a few that made the top of our list:
Diigo
Stumbleupon
Huddle
Good luck with your search!

Permalink Reply by Abby Thaker on March 27, 2009 at 7:28am

Thanks for these recommendations! I'll have to check out Huddle; that's a new one to me. What features were you looking for in a platform that you weren't able to find in anything pre-existing? These platforms you mentioned sound more like social bookmarking applications. I'm curious to hear more about the platform your district is developing!

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on March 25, 2009 at 3:41pm

If you can spare part of a computer, take a look at Drupal at www.drupal.org. We are creating our website using that at www.enabling.org. It is meant to be built with minimal tech support.

Permalink Reply by Donelle on March 25, 2009 at 10:55pm

We are looking into something similar at our school as well. Have you looked into Moodle with Elluminate? Ning would also be a great option. I'd love to hear what you decide on. :)

Permalink Reply by Abby Thaker on March 27, 2009 at 7:32am

What do you mean by Moodle with Elluminate? We've used both, but I'm not familiar with using both together. We are considering Moodle, but haven't considered Elluminate because we're looking more for asynchronous communication at this point. We're definitely considering Ning too.

Permalink Reply by Laurent on May 26, 2009 at 8:49am

Ning is great for collaboration/communiation (and free/cheap). i've seen folks try to do this using moodle (moodle+elluminate) and it tends to be fair amount of work to get everything integrated/working the way you want and require training/commitment by the rest of the staff (though definitly worth experimenting with if you're a tech-tinkerer). If you're interested in a commercial application (sorry for the commercial post here, but figured it was relevant) we offer an integrated learning platform that districts use both to teach their students and for PD (gradebook, assessment, learning management, lesson planning and collaboration/distance learning). We also offer some online PD courses you might find relevant. if you're interested, feel free to ping me or check out http://www.excelsiorsoftware.com/profServices/professionalDevelopme...

Permalink Reply by Mark Cruthers on May 26, 2009 at 8:53am

Take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's power point presentation platform. Both are web based platforms, have a bunch of features and free basic service.

Permalink Reply by Wendy Cotta on August 23, 2009 at 6:12pm

I think a ning would be ideal with a community wiki link for collecting district resource links. I learned about ning last year; it was pretty easy to create one and understand its interface. I loved the blog feature. The discussion boards, of course, are already familiar to most people.

This year, I had to learn Moodle to implement it in my school. Its interface is not as user-friendly; neither is its installation and maintenance. It is goliath compared to the ning's David. Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Steven Katz on August 27, 2009 at 8:34am

I started using a wiki with my teachers last year http://cdspd.wikispaces.com/. The teachers liked it for the resources. I just started a ning with them, but it hasn't taken off yet. I like the wiki + ning combo. It is practical & free. Let us know what you decide on.

Permalink Reply by Susan WB on September 1, 2009 at 8:13am

Have you (or anyone else on this DB) considered or explored using Elgg (http://elgg.org/)?

I've heard some good things about it and read some research where it was used for teacher professional development/e-learning and it seemed to have quite a lot of promise. It's open source and combines features of social networks and file repositories (among many other features). But no one I know is using it... does anyone have any experience to share - positive or negative?

As for your original question, I would use either Ning or a wiki - possibly both in combination. I think you're right in your statement that the wiki would work better for organizing files/content and the Ning site would work better for communication. Though as others have noted earlier, you have many other options, and it partly depends on what you're already familiar/comfortable with.

Susan WB

Permalink Reply by Jim Murphy on March 19, 2010 at 9:22am

I am using a product purchased from Telligent called Community Server for this. Very powerful tool and available at decent prices (if your district wants to make this work, tell them to spend some money!!) for non-profit agencies. It is very easy to manage, provides easy to run communities and site-wide resource development. I am currently researching and implementing best-practices approaches to combining synchronous and asynchronous technologies to provide educators with sustained opportunties for professional learning. Have a look at www.telligent.com for more info on the products. Drupal and Moodle and other open source packages like Wordpress (www.wordpress.org) work well too and are free, but this product provided me with both the robust platform and the flexibility I was looking seeking. If you would like a look at what we are doing, then feel free to contact me. :-) It is always difficult to move these initiatives forward on a shoestring, so I hope your dsitrict is looking at putting some $$$$ into the initiative. It will pay off in the long run if you can keep more teachers off the road and more engaged in professional learning by using a combination of Web 2.0 technologies and synchronous online delivery tools directly from their schools or homes! Cheers!! Jim

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