Introductions

[Steve Hargadon]

Welcome! Please introduce yourself, let us know who you are and where you are from, and, if you are already using Ning in an educational setting, how you are using it.

[Gladys]

Thanks Steve!
I'll try now.

[Gerald Ardito]

Gerald from Westchester County, New York.

For the past 2 years I have been using class blogs with my 7th and 8th grade science classes. My students have really enjoyed posting to the blog and I can honestly say that each students' writing improved over the course of the school year (which is a great thing).

My one concern about the blogs is that they can reinforce the traditional role of teacher as "authority." I can create posts to the blog to which the students can (only) respond. No matter how productive their responses, they are never true partners or authors.

When I looked into using Ning, I was impressed with the fact that any member of a community could initiate a conversation. So, I have set up a classroom for one of my classes as a pilot. I am eager to see what happens now that the students will have the ability to be authors as well as commentators.

[Steve Hargadon]

Welcome, Gerald! The "authority" issue with blogs is more widespread than just in the classroom. It's very hard to be heard in the comment section of a blog, and so often the comments reflect the need to get attention--which is very hard to do in a comment section of a blog. I think the "egalitarian" nature of discussions in the forum dialogs in social networks are a real attraction to me, and I think they have made a difference in the willingness of people to participate in them. I have heard over and over how much educators, in particular, have appreciated having an ability to easily and effectively enter a dialog on an education-oriented Ning.

Do let us know if you see a difference for the students!

[Gerald Ardito]

I appreciate your feedback about this.
The next step for me is to lay this out for my students and their parents. I'll keep you posted on how it's going.

[Alfia]

I'm Alfia an ESL teacher from Russia. Today is the first day I discovered 'Ning in education' for myself. I'm interested in using webtools in my teaching. I'm going to launch blogging and podcasting projects with 13-14 year old students this year. I'll be happy to find friends here .

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, Alfia! Glad to have you here. I love how small the world has become. I visited Russia in 1986, and boy has the world changed since then. Hope this site helps you!

[Gerald Ardito]

I held a meeting the other night with the parents of one of my classes. This class will pilot my use of Ning network, with which I hope to move beyond the blog to an active, participatory community.

The parents were thrilled!

Now, on to the students. More as it happens.

[Alexis]

I have also been doing more blogs with our community. I also found a neat site for podcasts for kids. I have put the podcasts of story norey on my main page and the alice in wonderland ones on my page. I have found links to literature for the older children as well in a podcast format.
You can put the url in your music player. I found out how to find the url and put it in there. I wanted to put up the webradio shows from greenspan as there are having trouble with invision and the format used I can't put those on our player which we so desperately need for our children and teachers.

[Steve Hargadon]

Hey, Gerald!

I'm interested in the parent response--that they were "thrilled." What exactly elicited that response from them? Very cool...

[Gerald Ardito]

They liked several things. They liked the fact that the students had some autonomy (like in setting up their own pages and being able to add pictures, audio, and video). They liked that all members have an equal voice in starting and contributing to conversations (forums). They also (interestingly) liked that it takes the stuff the students love about Facebook, etc. and makes it useful for educational purposes. This last part surprised me most.

What do you think?

[Steve Hargadon]

I love it. I am surprised, too, but encouraged. Keep us posted!

[Kristina Karl]

Hi, I am Kristina Karl from Falmouth, MA. I am not currently using Ning in my classroom. My students get a lot of technology in my classroom - I am a new teacher, so I am familiar with a lot of stuff from college. I teach middle school life science, and I really enjoy watching the light turn on for the kids at that crucial moment!
I am currently implementing Skype, podcasting, sound editing, and hopefully video editing soon, along with using ITunes, YouTube, Powerpoint, and Audacity. All of these programs are useful in the students' everyday life, and it provides a hook to keep them engaged in the lessons.

We are working on a Climate Change Project, which poses a perfect opportunity to implement these and other multimedia and technology into our tight curriculum! This is the first year of the project, so I haven't really got any news on it yet, but we should be in full swing in a couple of months.