Using Ning for Educational Social Networks

Katie Christo Female Chennai, Tamil Nadu India: Share

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Location:

Chennai, India

Organization:

American International School Chennai

Occupation:

Instructional Technology Specialist Middle School

Website:

http://katiechristo.pbwiki.com

Blog:

http://itsthinktank.blogspot.com

Skype Username:

ktchristo

Twitter Username:

katiechristo

Comment Wall (10 comments)

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At 5:51am on January 7, 2009, Mark Cruthers said…: Hi ,

With your work in Instructional Technology, I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's power point presentation platform. Both are web based platforms, have a bunch of features and free basic service.

At 11:37pm on December 25, 2008, marcotuts said…: Hi Katie,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this virtual ning network is no exception. My name is Marco Morales; I am a 20 year old college student from Olin College of Engineering (in Needham, MA). I am a part of a group of 6 Olin College students (we're in Needham,MA, and engineering students) who has taken a year off to work on an education related project. I found you worked at a middle school, and since our project is specific to middle schools, I thought you might be interested! Our project is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

Under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum and other web tools, we hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2008, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools want to pilot and use at their schools, while allowing individual teachers to implement this tool in their own classroom.

Our project, titled Alight Learning, is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975. We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start.

Feel free to email me back, check out alightlearning.com, anything you like!

Thanks,

Marco Morales
marcotuts@gmail.com
Website, IM, Skype, Twitter = marcotuts

At 6:54am on October 13, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: Anytime. Nice chatting with you. Good luck!

At 6:34am on October 13, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: Response has been incredible. We actually had a student needing an economics course to take over summer but was to be in Europe. To really push the limites of on-line learning, one of my fabulous teachers actually created the course for him to take using Ning. The student participated along with the rest of the class, followed assignments, collaborated with the other students and posted his projects/assignments. Perfect example of what could be with Anytime, anywhere learning.

Students love all the tools we are exposing them to. They use blogging, social bookmarking (del.icio.us), and Ning. If they have any complaint it is that there is a lot to learn in tools along with the content. The have been asking for a prep course so they have some familiarity with the tools before actually using them while learning. This was difficult for us as we know learning is best when it is applied. Most of our students are pretty high achieveing and after a few focus groups decided to offer a class in 6th grade (to expose them to tools they could use through middle school) and then 9th grade (more sophisticated tools they could learn and use through high school on onto college). The IT teachers teaching the content are in touch with their teachers and do integrate the tools with some projects/expectations for the grade level. So far, so good.

Collaboration is all about sharing. Of course you can adapt the permission slip for use there. We also make sure parents have access to the wiki's and ning sites so they can see how it is used.

At 6:17am on October 13, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: grade6-12 permission slip for Web 2.0 and social networking sites.doc

Here is our permission slip for grades 6-12 for Web 2.0 and social networking. See if it would help.

At 6:01am on October 13, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: You know Katie, We were doing a lot of blogging and concerned about kids wondering in blogger. Blogger put out a scrift to remove the dashboard on your blog so kids can't search for another blog. Cuts down the wondering quite a bit. Wonder if that's possible with ning?

At 5:48am on October 13, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: Is there such a think available at Ning or are you requesting they develop one? Is your concern more people getting into the Ning you create, or kids wondering through Ning finding other social networks?

Given your response is so fast, what's the time difference? It's 8:50 am in NY

At 5:37am on October 13, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: You could use a wiki and keep it closed (only those with accounts you approve to join the community). Would have pages just like ning. Places to store and share resources, collaborative writing, posting presentations/completed work. We have some middle school students using Ning. It is a closed community. They are taught internet safety and responsibility at the same time. Parents sign off a permission slip that explains the potential exposure. Truly, no more "dangersous" than a student that has open internet prvileges and does a search on a myriad of "inappropriate" topics/terms.

At 6:53am on October 12, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: By you setting up the Ning, you could limit outsiders by having the requests to join come through you. I'll give this some more thought. Nice to hear back from you.

At 6:38am on October 12, 2008, Neil A. Rochelle said…: Would love to know more about how you became a teacher at the American School. Where are you from?

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Kassandra and Katie Christo are now friends

March 22

Katie Christo replied to Kassandra's discussion 'Introduction'

Hey Kassandra! Welcome to Ning! I work at the American International School in Chennai. Katie

March 22

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March 22

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Welcome to the community for those using Ning to power their educational social network. Also be sure to check out Classroom 2.0 for general discussions of Web 2.0 in the classroom.

Please introduce yourself in the "Introductions" forum post. And to see a list of Ning networks being used in education (or to add yourself!), please visit Social Networks in Education.

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