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]

Alexis:

Fascinating. Please keep us posted. Our family lives in an area that we are told has a very high concentration of children with Autism (near Rocklin, CA), and we have several friends who have children with some form of Autism. Is it an urban legend that children with Asperger Syndrome are often interested in dinosaurs? At least in one case with a family we are close to, it's true.

Hope you'll keep us posted!

[Alexis]

I haven't heard of that legend. It is true that most are interested in Thomas the Tank. My son has more sensory processing disorder with a speech challenge. So we give families links to state resources and help for special education. I usually put up sensory play ideas like bubbles and science tables.

I try to put up ideas for play for learning. Such as math we can do a store maybe pets or clothing shop. I find that my members love these ideas. Play restaurant to help with ordering and pretend preparing of ingredients. These fun interactive ways to learn and play. One example used was how to teach the concept of taxes by using a pizza. Its neat stuff and they always have interesting ways of learning.
I learned about addition from my teachers by the + sign acted out as a character. We called him big greedy plus. He was always greedy and looking for ways to get more. Subtraction was blue and always had holes in his pockets, would start out with a certain amount of marbles or different objects, due to the holes in his pockets ended up with Less.

Division was fair always look for fair ways to divide up the treasures he found between friends he was red. Multiplication always say oppurtunities and ways to multiple those ideas or objects. So it really made an impression on me as a kid.

My tutor did neat things with letters. Q and U for instance were lovers and u would get quiet in q's pressence because he was bussy kissing q. It made learning fun. I love those kind of fun ideas. Swinging on a swing can become a space rocket into different planets. This is a fun way for parents to teach their kids and have some fun too, whether they have autism or not.

[Steve Hargadon]

I did some reading, and I guess with Asperger the kids often have a "Special Interest Area (SIA)," sometimes transportation or animals.

Will look forward to hearing more from you on how Ning works for your community.

Steve

[Kathryn Blades]

Hello~ I'm Kathy from Elizabeth City, NC (Northeastern NC, near the coast) I am a media coordinator but recently I have been one of the E-Learning Hands on Science Coach through a Golden Leaf Grant and Elizabeth City State University. We connected teachers throughout 12 counties through Interactive Video and some Web 2.0 tools (such as a wiki and a blog). We are pursuing additional grant funds for working with another group of teachers this summer (beginning in June) and throughout the fall. Ning will be a wonderful way to connect everyone and create a learning community.

[Steve Hargadon]

Great. Glad to have you here, Kathryn. Hope you have success with Ning!

Steve

[Leigh]

Leigh from San Diego, CA. I would really like to use a ning in my class, but they are blocked by my district. :( I am trying to get ideas and formulate a solid plan for using one with my students so that I can appeal the decision and possible get permission to use my ning.

My classes are moodling, blogging, making movies and using wiki's. I think the ning would be a great addition to the classroom, a way to take the class home as well as an opportunity to teach the students how to safely and responsibly use social networks.

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, Leigh! I recognize the avatar! Glad to have you here.

One strategy that can work is to get a personalized domain name for your ning network--or even your several networks--and then have your district not block that domain. For example, I think if you had the domain www.sandiegoschools.org, you could set up Ning networks by using specialty subdomains--like, http://school1.sandiegoschools.org or http://school2.sandiegoschools.org. You'd still need to pay Ning the $4.95/month for each network you were using a custom domain for, but only have to unblock one domain name. Does that make sense?

Would love to hear about any experiences you have using Ning this way.

Cheers!

[Leigh]

Hi! Thanks for the feedback and the welcome! I am trying to explore the possibilities and that is a great suggestion, but possibly costly and with budgets as they are....Another suggestion was unblocking the ip associated with my ning. I will share when we discover a solution that works for the school and district.

Thanks again!

[karin riggs]

Hello All,
I'm Karin Riggs, a "technologist, faculty development person, research programmer" at University of Illiois at Chicago...

I just came back to the office after attending the Educause midwest conference downtown Chicago. I was introduced to Ning for the first time- it was part of an impromptu presentation that someone (Michael McVey) gave when the speaker did not show (his community is DC2008)... I think it's great, easy to use, hosts a mulititude of multimedia file types- this is really good for faculty & instructors who want to reach outside the Blackboard system- outside UIC.

I have an instructor that I'm working with specifically (actually a few) who want to create online communities with other Educators (specifically educators working toward / teaching Social Justice)... and this seems to be a perfect venue to have rich collaboration without too steep a learning curve.

I'm hoping to take a look around at some sites, make contributions where I can and begin my own community. I was hooked when I saw the discussion from all the Chicago people! Thanks to Steve for making a great community, I'm looking forward to learning more as I look around. I'll be reading your Blog Steve, and appreciate any other suggestions or directions about using web 2.0 in higher ed, I'm "kind of" a newbie- I guess we all are a little bit.

Thanks & have a great sunny day everyone! Karin Riggs

[Steve Hargadon]

Wow. Great to have you here, Karin. You might also enjoy Classroom 2.0 (www.classroom20.com), and be sure to check out http://socialnetworksined.wikispaces.com/--where there is a self-populated list of educators using social networking in education.

Thankfully, it is a sunny day in California!

[Steve Hargadon]

That link was supposed to be http://socialnetworksined.wikispaces.com

[Collette Snowden]

I'm from the University of South Australia School of Communication and I'm using NING with a large undergraduate course (subject) in Public Relations. The students are from a variety of degree programs - but mainly Marketing, Communication Management,Journalism, Commerce, Psychology, plus a few other ones where the student is taking the course as an elective. The students include quite a
significant number of international students, from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, India, and some exchange students.