Teacher created logins?

[Teresa Myers]

How do I create logins for students on Ning?

[April Capuder]

An email address is required for creating Ning logins. A work around for signing up students without email accounts is creating a gmail account for yourself. You can then use this email address with a variation added to it. For example, if your gmail email account is [e-mail], you can use [e-mail] for student 1 and then [e-mail] for student 2, etc. The verification email is sent to your [e-mail] inbox which will have the link that you can click on to add the student to the NING.

[Merle Hall]

Thanks this is a useful trick to know.

[April Capuder]

You're welcome. Plus setting up students in this manner allows the teacher to monitor all NING activity (forum post, group discussion posts, email/inbox messages) b/c teacher can set up all students' settings to send email notification of everything. So assuming students don't go in and change settings, a teacher that is concerned about monitoring all activity, can do so by receiving emails in their teacher gmail account.

[Kelly]

Hello,

I'm really interested in the Ning, with 7th and 8th Graders, but some 7th Graders are not quite 13. Did you encounter this issue with your 7th Grade? I have put a Ning together, and ready to roll it out, but I'm not sure about the under not quite 13 yet.

[Lisa Schwartz]

Kelly as far as my understanding of COPPA law goes, as long as the under 13 yr olds do not post any personally identifying info (w/out parental consent on file) and you do not collect an email address from them you should be fine. Personal identifying info would be a name, an address, a photo etc. you are allowed to use a first name, but you would want to be careful with linking that to the name of your class and school. When I worked for http://tolweb.org I just had students choose pseudonyms, and we did not collect their email addresses or allow for identifying photos (they registered via their teachers). In that way it was ok to use the name of the school. Have fun!

[Kelly]

Lisa, Thank you for this information, it is very helpful, however, when I was testing out the Ning sign up, I'm getting the questions date of birth, if I put in someone 12 it will not accept. Am I missing something?

[Leslie Carlisle]

You will need to put a date that makes them 13. I have students use pseudonyms. Any student registering with a last name is suspended from the network until they change it. You can also have students who don't have emails use their parents' email address. This also allows me to have some additional adult monitors. I also have my principal and technology teacher on the network as well.

[Aysha Siddiqui]

I read the variety of ways you can counter the problem of signing up under 13 on ning for educational networking. Thanks for the ideas.