Journal #7

Technology Tool: Social Networking

Social networking is a way for groups of people with a common interest to stay in touch online.  Common social networking sites include Facebook and Myspace which allow people to develop profiles and interact with other members building an on-line community.

Discussion #1: Ning for Students
This discussion followed the positives and negatives of using Ning in the classroom.  The positive aspects Ning provides is a social site appearance where students can create their own personalized page.  They can add music, photos and even podcasts along with interacting across other Ning users.  Using this type of site in the classroom can also be a valuable tool for the teacher because it provides a platform to teach students about safety and ethics in the social networking space.  Some of the negative aspects of Ning are that it is an open system and may cause concern for safety in addition to the fact that there are ads on the site which may contain inappropriate content.  There is also a typical age requirement of 13+ and it requires an e-mail address to sign up which all students may not have.  There were some solutions listed in the thread to address these concerns such as setting the Ning to a privacy setting for a more controlled environment or opting out of the ads for free if you sign up as an educator. The discussion also mentioned some alternatives to Ning such as Moodle, Elgg and Think.com.  Each of these sites had their own positives and negatives such as user friendliness and cost.  From what I gathered, teachers prefer a system that is more closed such as Moodle, while the students prefer Ning due to it's user friendly interface and ability to use it outside of the classroom as a social networking tool.

Discussion #2  How do you use blogs, wikis, etc., in your postsecondary setting?
This discussion talked about the benefits of using a blog and/or wiki in the classroom.  Teachers found these tools helpful in, "seeing a more personal side" of their students along with the ability to provide prompt feedback.  Wikis are a great course management tool that allow teachers to organize their class content in one place with a home page for each class that can be accessed on the sidebar.  Teachers also found these tools helpful to stay in the "loop" on what their students are writing about to tailor the lessons to better fit their needs. The discussion mentioned that it is helpful to have an RSS such as Bloglines or Google Reader to feed all updates from the student blogs/wikis into one place. Some of the obstacles teachers came across were a few technical issues with having students post on the blog, some may take time to get accustom to the process.  Students did find blogs helpful in reflecting on class content and having the ability to read other classmates posts for reassurance.