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.

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, Corina! Congratulations! :) Saw your post on Web 2.0 and administrators. I think that's really going to be interesting to explore as well.

Steve

[Lexie Weitzel]

My name is Lexie Weitzel. I teach American Government in a suburban St. Louis school district. I am looking for a classroom to collaborate with about the 2008 election, starting in September. Please help!

[Steve Hargadon]

Lexie:

Be sure to ask for this at Classroom 2.0 (www.classroom20.com) as well.

Glad to have you here!

Steve

[Jady]

Hi! My name is Jady:) I teach math intervention in a small rural town in Kentucky. I am enrolled in a class with Dr. Nathan Lowell, who has introduced a lot of new network sites to us. He suggested trying out a Ning, so here I am.

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, Jady! Seems like you've been participating. How have your found the social networking environment? Was it what you expected?

[johnhennessy]

Hi I'm John, a CPD Coordinator for second level science teachers in Ireland. We use many web 2.0 tools to try to promote collaboration among teachers and students. I've been using ning for a while now for personal groups but have just begun to explore the potential for education. Worked well for an intergenerational family group. Seems to be about finding the particular approach which teachers can appreciate and providing useful exemplars of use with students. Will start with a private network of CPD facilitators and intend to expand to use with students. Hope to learn more here.

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, John, and welcome! Hope you'll give some feedback here as you expand your use of Ning. I think the professional development use is really getting well-understood. The classroom use is something of a new frontier, and I'm always anxious to hear what experiences are. Take care.

[Tony Schultz]

Hello all
My name is Tony Schultz. I am a physics PhD candidate at the City University of New York and teach Dance Technology at Sarah Lawrence College. What is dance technology? Good question, we are still inventing it.

Private social networks provide a good mixture of public and private to have students share and develop ideas and technologies.

Check out our blog at dancemachines.blogspot.com

Sorry the network is closed. :(

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, Tony! Can't wait to hear more about "dance technology." :)

[Tedel]

Hello,

My name is Jorge Enrique Aguayo but I'm usually called Tedel. I was an English teacher for some years and I started writing Heptagrama after some time in that activity. Now the site is doing pretty fine.

I joined here because I was looking forward to meeting different kinds of teachers. I think I have a lot to learn and who better to help me learn new interesting things but you?

Nice to meet you over there.

[Steve Hargadon]

Welcome, Tedel. Are you using Ning? What kind of teacher networks do you already belong to? I'm very interested in how Ning compares with the other networks.

Glad to have you here!

[John Spear]

John Spear from National Sports Academy in Lake Placid, NY. I'm the school's assistant head and teach American Literature. We're an independent boarding school for winter sports athletes. The more successful our students are the more days they spend away from school. We've been researching lots of web-based content management software and find them all lacking and way too expensive for our budget. Our students all use Facebook and I think will intuitively understand how to navigate, make use of and add value to a social networking site like Ning. Starting next year we're going to use Ning to organize all of our classes, clubs, sports teams, activities, alumni, faculty, etc. I've started to get it organized and in our June faculty meetings we'll start adding content and getting ready for the 2008-09 school year. Would love feedback on our site and suggestions: http://gomountaineers.ning.com/.