Ning in K-6

[Michael Lane]

HELP PLEASE
I teach in an elementary school and needed a secure safe networking site for my students. I found Ning, and thought YES!
But, unfortunately Ning have sent me an email saying they can't remove the adverts as my students are under the age of 13!
"From Ning: [The Ning Team - 11/03/2008 03:51 PM]
Hi!
Thank you for your follow-up message and thank you again for using Ning for your social network and for requesting our free trial offer to remove ads from student networks. We really appreciate it. Because your network is being used by children under the age of 13. According to Ning's Terms of Service, we offer Ning to those over 13 years of age. This isn't an arbitrary. It's so that we can comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (www.coppa.org) in preventing the collection of personal information from children under 13. Because of this, we are unfortunately unable to support your network. Please refer to our Terms of Service for further information: http://www.ning.com/about/tos.html. Our sincere apologies if this wasn't clear when you created your network.
Please let us know what else we can do to be helpful."

[Steve Hargadon]

Hi, Michael! I just responded to your email privately as well.

This is a difficult issue, but the COPPA legislation has made it difficult to provide social networking to younger students. It helps to remember that when COPPA was written, we didn't have all of the great examples of Web 2.0 and social networking services that we do now, and most people didn't see the pedagogical value of them. The good news is that I think our societal perspective is changing, but we have to be patient.

While not as feature-rich and easy to use as Ning, you might look at the Open Source programs Moodle and Elgg for some functionalities that can be installed in your local school network and where you can manage the privacy issues of COPPA locally.

Cheers,

Steve

[Michael Lane]

Thanks Steve,
much appreciated. I know we have to be queeky clean in what we expose our students too. It is a shame that our young students can't be involved and taught was is correct and what is harmful, therefore they are responsibly informed; and not just denied access through fear.
I'll keep looking.
Thanks again
Mike

[Nancy Bosch]

Don't get me wrong, I love ning! but I don't know if I'd use ning if it were available with my K-6 students and I'll tell you why. It is too hard to monitor, there are too many nooks and crannies. Not only do you the "front page" forum discussions, you have individual pages, blogs, photo and video uploads, ability to have friends or reject friends. I can see a bunch of ways a ning junior could go bad. With all the wonderful stuff young kids do, they are young and sometimes do stupid stuff---and say stupid stuff. I monitor a student blog nightly, that's work in itself. I just think that teachers think kids are sooooooo tech literate when in fact they are just kids. IM, chatting, texting, downloading videos to You Tube and taking music off the internet does not make a tech literate kid.

Within a week of getting a cellphone one my 6th grade girls was getting crude and bullying texts from a "friend". Many kids need more supervision than they are getting from all of us until they are able to make their way safely, intelligently, and compassionately. Finished harping.

[Merle Hall]

Would anyone have a moodle or Elgg site that could be viewed, so a person could get an idea of how these systems are designed?

[Nancy Bosch]

I've done some online book discussions using moodle and have some other ideas that I haven't fleshed out yet--you can see all we've done here. Scroll down to Moodle, the username and password is there. I teach gifted kids and the book discussions were used for 4-6. I have mixed feelings about that particular activity, let me know if you want more info. N.

[Kristen Alliegro]

Hello MIchael. I'm rather new to Ning myself, however I am somewhat familiar with social networking in general. I would look into a closed Yahoo or Google Group that the kids can design and master themselves as well as invite specific individuals. You could initiate the group, being the moderator, viewing all messages incoming and outgoing as well as put individuals on "moderation status", which means their posts would have to be reviewed and approved by you prior to it going out to the group. Perhaps even enroll a parent (or few) as volunteer moderators.

You can set controls such as who can post photos, creating photo albums and so on. There are a ton of options and such groups can quickly grow into something fairly significant - I have created a few myself. I don't know what their policies are as far as age goes, but I'll bet there's more leniency with a self-controlled system like that than an open forum such as facebook, twitter and Ning.

I hope this is helpful and do keep us updated.

Kristen

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