Presentation on Wikis, Blogs, and Social Networks

In a recent post on his blog, Karl Kapp included links to handouts and slides from a presentation he did on wikis, blogs, and social networks. Both can be accessed on a page in the wiki for the book he just had published: Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning: Tools for Transfering Know-How from the Boomers to the Gamers. The wiki includes a glossary for the book.

I'm still trying to decide whether or not to buy the book. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's read it.

100,000 Ning Social Networks

According to a post on the Ning blog dated September 23, "There are now 100,000 social networks on Ning. 70,000 of these networks have been created in the past seven months alone."

In a post yesterday, Gina Bianchini explained the differences between a Ning social network and a Facebook group. I joined Facebook a few weeks ago, and I'm not really impressed with it--especially when compared to Ning. In fact, I've only logged in two or three times since I joined.

The first thing I noticed is that when I receive a message in Facebook, the e-mail notification I receive doesn't include the message. I have to log in to actually read it. Also, my profile is the same no matter what group I join. In Ning, the creator of the network can change what profile information is requested for that particular network. Also, in Ning, people can't see what other social networks I belong to. In Facebook, apparently, every time I join a new group, my "friends" are notified--at least I'm informed when they do it.

Blogging and Ning

In response to questions from Kirsten Morton, who is a classmate of mine at CU-Denver, Tony Karrer, eLearning Technology, wrote about blogging as part of a classroom experience. I commented on his blog to point him to Brent's blog so he could see that there were more students in the class than the four linked in Kirsten's blog.

From his blog, Sue Waters, Mobile Technology in TAFE, found mine and read my most recent post about Ning. From reading Sue's blog, I discovered that she has a Ning social network for people interested in eTools and Tips for Educators. According to the site,

This group has been set up for the Video in e-learning session for e-Tools and Tips September series of How To Session for 2007 E-learning Networks Community Forum.

Initially we'll be discussing video good practices however we plan to keep this site going and expand it to include other cool tools for e-learning for education and training.

On her blog, Sue also refers to a 31 Day Blog Project that she participated in. (A scaled-down version of this could work for a class where students are required to blog.) One participant in the project started a Ning social network for members of the group.

Ning in Education

On August 3, we held an organizing meeting for Sloan-C SL-NET (Second Life - Networking Education and Technology). The suggestion was made that we should have some place on the web where we could have asynchronous discussions.

Sloan-C's Moodle-based community pages seems the obvious choice until a friend I met through Second Life suggested I look at Ning, which provide free (and premium) social-networking sites. He pointed me to the Classroom 2.0 social network, which has 2408 members right now.

This seemed ideal, so I created the Sloan-C SL-NET social network. The primary advantages over Moodle are its public visibility, the ability of members to start forums and form groups, and the accessibility of RSS feeds. I'm using a Ning site for a hybrid technical writing class I'm teaching this fall. (It's private for the obvious reasons.) I've also joined a social network for educators who are using Ning in education.