Ninging @ NECC

This year will mark my first time presenting a NECC, and I couldn't be more excited or more nervous. I decided to present on what we were doing at the College of Education with Ning, but I thought that some of the other "people behind the Ning" would be interested so I put out a call on Twitter. Boy did I get an incredible & wonderful set of responses. I am honored to co-present with the following:

Dean Mantz was Director of Technology for USD 405 in Lyons, Kansas. Dean has recently taken a position with USD 376 in Sterling, KS. He conducts technology integration trainings with teachers from a variety of fields to help create interesting lessons to education-impacting problems. Prior to his current position, he served as the Assistant Director of Technology and was the lead instructor for the Rice County Technology Academy.

Dianne Krause is the Instructional Technology Specialist and Classrooms for the Future Coach at Wissahickon School District in Ambler, PA. She
works with teachers district-wide to best integrate technology into their teaching and to develop 21st century skills in students. Prior to this position, Dianne was a French teacher recognized as a Keystone Technology Integrator for her technology integration into her courses.

Amira Fouad, Program Manager for RezEd.org, the Hub for Learning and Virtual Worlds, a network launched by Global Kids Inc. in March of 2008. Amira worked as a facilitator for the Project Tolerance Fellowship and the National Coalition Building Institute in programs utilizing conflict mitigation and informal education as a vehicle for peace building and community development.

Sheryl Grant is the Director of Social Networking for HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media & Learning. She is a former instructor for UNC-ITS Teaching & Learning, and coordinator for the Community Workshop Series, an award-winning program serving free information literacy workshops to the general public.

We will be discussing the following Nings & how we adminsiter them:

The College of Education at NC State is utilizing Ning to leverage the the popularity of these SNS, such as MySpace and Facebook, in a more professional environment with their pre-service teachers. Their goal is to encourage discourse and sharing both in and out of the classroom. Students are grouped not just by class or course in the Ning network, but by interest and social groups.

The HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media & Learning Winners' Hub uses Ning in order to create a public learning experience. Winners report to the hub as their projects evolve and create a "learning legacy" that serves successive winners and others in the digital media and learning community.

RezEd is a Ning- supported community of practice that brings attention to the myriad ways virtual worlds are being used for learning in various settings. It covers both commercial and educational virtual worlds through news updates; multimedia resources; a podcast series with youth, theorists, world builders, practitioners and experts in the field; a curated best practice report series, various digital media resources, guest-moderated discussions, etc. In addition, knowledge is generated and shared as members contribute photos and videos, facilitate special interest groups, and manage personal blogs.

The Wissahickon School District uses Ning as a professional learning network for faculty and staff of the district. The Ning network is for sharing, collaboration, support and communication district-wide. Groups are created for each grade level, school, department and other special-interest audiences. Resources are shared amongst colleagues in different buildings and grade-levels. Wissahickon is also exploring the use of Nings with students and its implications on pedagogy and learning.

The Future Kansas Teachers Scouting Ning was designed by ESSDACK to allow talented future teachers to be discovered and recruited by great districts.

Join us if you can in the Open Source Lab!

Tuesday, 6/30/2009, 12:30pm–1:30pm WWCC 152 B

My first SITE Conference

Last week I attended my first all "research conference" SITE in Charleston, SC. Now one of my favorite things to do is present - its one of the things I'm actually good at, but I was SOOOO nervous about SITE. See, I live this weird world of limbo at my university. I work with professors all day long, but I am not "one of them." I'm support staff, and I'm perfectly happy with that designation. However, I'm also in graduate school (trying to officially qualify for my job - don't worry I was hired mid-way through my grad program and promised to stay in school so it "counts") and that makes things like this a bit weird and scary and therefore makes me nervous.

This was the first time I have presented on my research and as I'm working on my thesis - I just find so many holes (committee, please disregard that sentence for my defense on Monday). I was worried everyone would see my big gaping flaws and shoot me down in front of everyone.

Luckily, my session was sparsely attended (I was in that other building that no one could ever find), but those there were very nice and provided some great feedback. I got a chance to do a few bits of networking with others interested in my topic and felt like I was really headed in the right direction with my ideas and research. In fact, someone had done a very similar study with students in Facebook vs. mine in Ning and we reached the same conclusion.

If I pass on Monday - I'll write more about that :) But in the meantime, here is my PP. It doesn't make too much sense without my voice over - hope to add that soon.

The Walled Garden approach to Social Networking with Ning

View more presentations from bethanyvsmith.

Creating a Ning - What I have learned so far

Technorati Tags: ning socialnetwork

I created a Ning for the College of Education at NC State about 6 months ago. We officially unveiled it at the begining of the semester, and so far have over 150 members. I've run into some "stumbling blocks" that I'd like to share with others that are interested in starting a Ning themselves.

1) Public vs. Private
This has been a big issue with us, should our Ning be open or not? In the end (and after getting feedback from the faculty), we decided to leave the main Ning open, to allow users to dictate the transparency of their pages (private, only friends, etc.). Then groups can be closed as need be. This has allowed us to have poublic and private areas of the site - and so far is working quite well

2) Private Groups
The biggest issue with Private Groups is managing membership. For example, if you want to invite someone to join a group this is the process:
-They recieve invitation
-They join Ning
-They then have to request invitation to private group
-Group admin has to approve (even if you sent them the original invite)
-Then they have to confirm the invitation before they are added
This has added several days in the group process and in between the last two steps they seem to virtaully disappear from the management tabs.

3)Photos
Right now I've decided to manually confirm each photograph. This is a tricky area for me, normally we would request everyone submit a Photo Release form, but since these are all "Adults" posting photos themselves (not me posting them) it gets a bit well murky.

4)Group Page
I have issues with the design of the group page and I can't appear to change it without changing the apperance on the main page - this is annoying to me and others that want to customize their group pages.

5) Changing Text
You can actually change the Welcome Messages, etc. in Ning in the LANGUAGE TAB. This made no sense to me at first and took me awhile to figure out.

6)Premium Services
They are worth it. If you are dealing with kids, you can get the ads removed for free, but in our case we didn't qualify. But I don't have a problem paying $19.95/month to get them taken off. I wish I had actually gotten the custom URL in the beginning (its a bit late now I think) but otherwise the premium services are a good way to get "credibility" for a non-educational service like Ning. (When I say non-educational I mean that they are not JUST education - they have tons of sites associated with Ning - some not appropriate)

7) Purpose
Be upfront about the purpose of the Ning. In my case, this is not a replacement of a CMS. This is a supplementary area for classes and groups within the college. Ideally it is for those that share interests, but don't know each other, to be able to meet virtually. I think this becomes even more important with our influx of Distance Ed courses.

8)Keep tabs on your Ning
The best way for me to do this is through the latest activity RSS feed. This way I'm not getting a billion e-mails, but I still feel like there is a level of oversight for the website. One of the things people (and when I say people I mean faculty) have concerns about is the ability for anyone to put anything on the site. Keeping on top of the site (which by the way has had no issues so far - cross your fingers).

I've used Steve Hargadon as my guide through the world of Ning, and went to one of his sessions at NECC, but it really took getting into it before I understood what I wanted and what it could do.

Creepy Treehouse vs. Walled Garden

Technorati Tags: ning elgg socialnetwork

One of the great things about the ed tech industry is their ability to coin phrases. I had never heard of these before until I went to NECC, and although they look on the surface to be completely unrelated, they are intimately acquainted.

The "Creepy Treehouse effect" which has been discussed in-depth by Chris Lott and Jared Stein is used to describe what happens when teachers join student social areas - such as Facebook or MySpace. Based on the information session I had with our college students last semester it was obvious how much they did not want us (and I define us as any authority figures) in their space. What they are they most afraid of is the "cyber-stalking" that they expect from their peers, but repel from their parents.

Most of us have experienced this "Creepy Treehouse Effect," maybe not as a student, but as someone with a presence on the Internet. The first time someone you don't know walks up to you and asks if you are feeling better because they read your Twit about it earlier that week - you will freak out just a bit.

So how do we use the power of Social Networks without the creepiness? We create a "walled garden," a place that utilizes the tools of a social network, but in a more controled environment. There are a few tool out there to do this, but Ning & ELGG are by far the most popular. Ning is the choice of most communities, mostly because it is free - while ELGG is a server based open source system. I've written about Ning & ELGG a bit, and IMHO ELGG just wasn't at the place I needed it to be - it just had its 1.0 release. So we went with Ning & so far the results have been fantastic. The students appear to appreciate having a social network that is seperate from their personal life - while the instructors are learning more about how their students interact.

So far so good....

Open Forum on Social Networking

Technorati Tags: ning socialnetworking

A few weeks back I hosted an Open Forum on Social Networking for the College of Ed. My group has been running around to try and find a social networking tool that could compete with FaceBook - yet be separate. I wanted to get a good idea of where our students and faculty were as well as where they wanted the College to be. This is what I found out:

1) Students use Facebook to communicate with friends back home (OK - knew that) However, most of them also used it to connect as seniors with other future NC State students.
2) Students don't want us in Facebook. They like that Facebook is a place for them. In fact most of them plan on getting rid of their facebook page when they graduate and will be teaching themselves.
3) Faculty (mostly) don't "get" Facebook, but they do get that their students are using it.
4) Faculty don't want an official representation in Facebook, especially in light of advertising endorsements, etc.
4) We have faculty members in NINGS!!!! Yea!!!

So what does this mean? Well, it gives me hope that I can create a network where students, future students, past students, faculty, etc., etc., etc. can meet and it might actually get some legs.

So here is the CED Ning site....a work in progress... but aren't all social networks :)
http://cedncsu.ning.com/