For the past five or so years, I've used NING as a virtual community for my classroom. At first, I simply asked students and parents to sign up. Later, after being challenged about the laws related to students 13 and under on the Internet, I simply asked parents to sign up and not use a birth date 13 or less years. Then this year, the use of NING was challenged further which led us to greater investigation. NING specified their rule that children 13 and under are not allowed on their social network.
As a law abiding citizen, I had to disband my use of NING yesterday.
While the absence of NING will definitely save me time as it took time for oversight, I do worry about what it will do for my classroom community.
Unlike a website, the NING is a streamlined, updated multimedia network for two-way conversation with the learning team 24-7. Teachers, parents and students were able to "converse" with Twitter-like streams, and blogs. They shared comments, projects, research, links, photos and videos whenever they wanted. We used the RSS feature to post Wonderopolis too. I checked in daily to get the pulse of what was happening with my learning community, and to make sure that the site was being used in a polite and positive manner.
Further, the site was a great place to bridge the geographic divide for students who were sick, traveling or lived far from school--NING was a place for them to check in while they lie in bed with a sore throat, or traveled abroad.
NING importantly was a place for voice. Even if you were the quietest child in the class, you could try out your voice on NING; "talk" to others in the class, and learn about your classmates.
Academically, NING fostered writing and reading fluency, sharing ideas, familiarity with 21st century tools and use of technology vocabulary.
Not every child was heavily involved with NING. Each year, usually seven or so participated with enthusiasm. Often the seven represented families who used a second language at home or students who were interested in enrichment. And while I used NING to promote learning across the curriculum, NING wasn't our curriculum--we use many, many other tech venues and tools for multimedia composition, skill acquisition, communication and research.
I offered NING a chance to create NINGLET, a platform for virtual classrooms, but they didn't jump at that idea. I understand why as there's little money to be made from children under 13 and school teachers.
So farewell to NING, a graphically pleasing, streamlined platform, and for now I'll get back to the essence of my work, student learning, while I explore possible new platforms for our virtual classroom. Any ideas?
