With your interest in Education 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. Here’s a public class recording you might find of interest.
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.