Hi Colleagues,
Like many of you I started a few nings.
It was exciting; a safe (well.....don't look at the ads), closed easy to use space that was infinitely customisable. And the cost? Free!
I got my entire school staff into it and they used it to share ideas, jokes schedule meetings - all the stuff you'd imagine an online faculty room to look like. I also got students travelling to Japan with our school to form a Ning - a place of discussion about homestays, food and preparations.
All fantastically useful....and free!
But, now I'm off - and I'm taking my people with me.
I'm off to
grou.ps to start again. I was going to stay and go with the 'free edu mini ning' option but, to be honest, I lost faith. Maybe in the fine print it might have said 'free until it's not'; but
- grou.ps is free up to 100Gb of traffic which for my puposes is ample
- grou.ps actually seems better - easier to use, more controllable and more versatile
So at this point, I can't think of a reason to stay - yeah, we'll lose some stuff, but that's life. Like moving house and losing your clock-radio in the process....and then getting an iphone instead....and then downloading 23 apps in order to get the same functionality as a clock-radio...oh bugger it, this analogy is rubbish.
I can understand why ning chose this path - I'm just not going to be travelling with them. Good luck Ning.