Saturday, November 7, 2009
Cedo535 Week Four Social Networks and Podcasts
Finally... A week where I feel like I actually might know what I'm talking about. This week's material was informative and a great review for me. As one who loves to "tinker" on the computer, the minute Louie introduced applications, such as Nings and Social Bookmarks, I was on it immediately. I am in the middle of creating my second Ning for the group that went to Rome. On the last night of our trip, everyone was talking about sharing emails and contacting each other. I couldn't resist and opened my big mouth to say, "Why try to email everyone to stay in touch? How about I create a Ning where we can all go and share pictures and chat and write our thoughts about our experience?" Of course no one had heard of Ning, but they were all immediately in love with the idea. So just the other day I created the Ning and sent the invites out. I would love for any of you to visit and offer suggestions. www.romepilgrims.ning.com. I purposely created an open site for anyone to join. Let me know if you think I should add or change something. As I have mentioned several times, I also created a Ning for my 5th and 6th graders. I'm happy with how it is evolving, but I do have to remind students to go there. They're not in the habit of automatically logging onto the Ning. After inviting a couple of other teachers to take a look, the language arts teacher is now wanting to use the Ning for her class, so now I am trying to "branch out," creating new pages for each class. So I am thrilled with how this Ning thing is catching on. I know had I just showed the teachers what a Ning is, they would have nodded, said, "cool," and never looked at it again. Actually creating one and inviting them has made all the difference. I did the same thing with Delicious. I created accounts for each grade level and then showed the students how to get there. The teachers didn't have to do anything and now the third grade teacher is adding to the class Delicious bookmarks. Yeah! I'm thinking of using the same approach to introduce podcasting. The more I do for them, the more likely they will use the application, and I constantly hear about all the fun and interesting projects that teachers are doing but that only end up in hard copy form. It would be cool to just have a whole gallery online of work and information.
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Kara,
ReplyDeleteI was prepared to create a blog and a Ning for use in my classroom second semester, but now I might start solely with the Ning. I think it might be too hard to manage both in the early stages, but perhaps I am not giving myself too much credit. I think it is interesting that your friends had not heard of a Ning because I have found that my digital natives had not heard of it either. I am amazed at how much I have learned that my little lambs have yet to know, and it makes me feel good about what we are doing in graduate class. I think the playing field is tilting again in my favor, and I hope to continue learning from my students about the types of technology that blows their hair back. How has the Delicious experiment gone so far? I am not sure my students would be too crazy about it. I must remember to take baby steps and not get ahead of myself. :)
Kara-
ReplyDeleteYour Rome Ning is awesome!!! I love that you are sharing technology with others who may or may not have ever heard of a Ning. It is a great place to share stories and photos, especially for those people who are not ready to plunge into facebook just quite yet. Have you had to help many of them set it up, or are people able to join on their own? I only ask because I created one at work, and the other teacher cannot get into it, but all of my students can. So, I don't know what the problem is! Do you have any troubleshooting advice?
Thanks!
Wow Kara, AWESOME Ning! I can't wait to see what you create for your classes. I never considered using this for groups I am involved with outside of my professional life but this is a great example of how to use a Ning in your personal life. When I taught at Milwaukee Messmer I led a 2 week service trip for high schoolers to Quito, Ecuador and we never found a good way to share photos and thoughts before the trip, if only I had know about Ning then!
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