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| This is what I feel like sometimes. I’m one of the little yellow dots. |
Ok! First! Understand that these comments come from someone, who probably just doesn’t get it yet. There has been a flurry over the past couple of weeks to set up social networks for education 2.0 issues, using a social networking tool called Ning (a great name, by the way, as long as you don’t have a cold). I’ve joined Library 2.0, School 2.0, and Classroom 2.0, and have accepted lots of requests to be people’s friends (well, at least four).
I must confess that I am a little under-impressed. I have a personal page, just like my daughter’s Facebook page. I have an unflattering picture of me there, a place to put a blog, a profile (which I’ve scaled way back), a picture of Steve Hargadon (best part of the page), and something called a Chatter.
The Chatter intrigues me, but it appears to be only for people who visit my page, and I don’t think I’ve visited the pages of any other users. I guess I’m a real digital recluse. There is a forum, with some great conversations, but it’s a forum. Nothing new there. Now let me repeat. I accept that I may simply be overlooking something here that’s hitting me over the head, but I’m to dull to know it. So please explain.
I’m wondering if this sort of social network “place” is really more for kids. Children need a clubhouse, a place where they can be themselves, pretend to be somebody else, make up their own rules, and dream of other places and times. But clubhouses have walls, as does Ning! It seems to be a container and less in the spirit of small pieces loosely joined (reference book by David Weinberger).
I don’t need someplace else to go to on the Internet. I need it to come to me, to my aggregator, or my mail box. I need it to be organic, infinitely shapable, and to be a valuable conversation.
So what am I not getting here?
Got to go, Vicki Davis wants to be my friend 😉
2¢ Worth!
I just learned that Ning will be adding a Wiki tool in June!
Image Citation:
Parks, J.. “GlocalVersation.” vaXzine’s Photostream. 17 Jun 2006. 30 Mar 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/vaxzine/168684755/>.
I know, I’m still learning it too. I do know that when you have a “friend” it gives you an easier way to reach people and talk to others.
I really see it (and the stop bullying site) as a place to make a repository of information and rate the items. We all get so frustrated that everything isn’t in one PLACE. Well, if we use it wisely, it could be on a particular topic and actually be a helpful way — a filing system of sorts. Where we actually can make sense of it all and determine what is the best. Sometimes we are so scattered it can be frustrating, but perhaps that is the very nature of this new web.
I’m not sure I get it yet either, but it is “growing on me!”
Have you seen kickapps.com? They offer social networking widgets that can be incorporated into your own website. When I started working on Stop Cyberbullying Day earlier this week, I thought about using them to create a site, but ended up going with Ning, since it only took me 10 minutes to get a social networking going there. Yeah, I would have preferred to host the network myself, but for creating a community in a pinch, it was really easy. So now we have all sorts of folks coming to the site – http://stopcyberbullying.ning.com – discussing online harassment and sharing resources, particularly videos. And the types of interactions that are happening there just wouldn’t have been as robust and multimedia-oriented if it had taken place on my blog. Plus, creating a social network elsewhere allowed me to claim less ownership of it. I wanted it to be a community space, not my space.
I’m pretty sure I’m missing something, too. I have a facebook page…but rarely go there. My personal blog, my bloglines, my e-mail…these are the places where I connect with friends, professionals, and engage in new conversations. But my kids love them…so maybe it just a different style for different people.
Vicky said: I really see it (and the stop bullying site) as a place to make a repository of information and rate the items
The main problem I can see is that there are so many of these sort of sites – someone who likes Ning will set it up there – someone else prefers Elgg, so uses that … and so on. Then you have to remember what your login in is for each site – ensure that you have the relevant RSS feeds so you don’t have to keep checking every day & so on.
I’m not sure what the answer is, nor even if there is one. I suspect that the answer will lie in abilities of end users to create their own customised home pages / portfolios/ mashups / PLE – call it what you want – it’s your (or, rather *my*) view of information that’s important to me – while keeping a watch over the radar to make sure new resources aren’t sneaking past.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen Steven Downes’ post today about Helen Barrett’s multiple portfolios – she’s used a range of tools (those listed often link to several more) all portraying the same information! It must have taken her a long time, but it’s really useful to see what can be done in different tools.
Emma
(P.S. The one I *really* don’t get is Twitter. I just can’t see what that offers that I can’t get from other things, other than annoyed by the intrusions!)
I don’t get it either. I just posted a little deeper response on my blog, but the basic thought is that we are reaching the point where these systems need to include our broader online life for us to participate.
I’m with you… I keep checking it… but honestly, it just feels like one more thing…
Probably merits a separate post, but I’ll add my name to the list. I already have social network. And if I want resources, I’ll probably search for them. And, as Chris says, it just feels like one more thing to do. Not to say it might not serve others well. But I’m not feeling the love right now…
I know what you mean… I signed up for a My Space, just for the experience of it. I have not done much with it at all and have no motivation to do so… until now. I have been subbing Middle School and it is AMAZING what a positive door it opens with kids (who have been constantly testing me or ignoring me since class started) when I say that I have a My Space! (I am sure that once they see what I have there now they will shut the door right away though!) They tell me about their spaces and want to know about mine.
After hearing the teacher who is the actual person Freedom Writers was based on I am thinking that one of the keys to educating the really struggling kids who are teens now is connecting to what really matters to them. I think that social networking is one of those things.
Janice
My students can be found hanging out at the 20-screen cinema on our main street in Sarasota. From time to time when we are talking about our weekends, one of my students will share that he or she went to the movie theater. My knee-jerk response (though I’m learning) is to say, “Oh, what did you see?”
Inevitably, eyes are rolled and the student along with others will reply in the voice I use when showing my grandfather how to set up his Netflix queue, “Mr. Chase, you don’t go to the movie theater to see movies. You go there to hang out.”
Not too long ago, it was the mall for my friends and me. We would go there see the people we knew and the peopl they knew and see who matched up enough to be our friends. (Note: We weren’t at all as metacognitive about all this.)
A fw weeks ago, worried about cyberbullying and wanting to take the learning where my kids live, I gave an assignment about Myspace asking my students to draft an essay on how parents can keep their kids safer on the site. Some of them are posted on our class blog (http://leadthechange.blogspot.com) What surprised me was not their focusing in on sexual predators as the main and sometimes only acknowledged danger of the site. What surprised me was number of students, mainly those who are among the more mature, who discussed in class the fact that they weren’t really logging in to Myspace anymore. They had “better things to do.”
At some point, we all stop loitering in the mall.
There will always be a balance between using tools to organize the information you want and still having to use many social networking sites to find what you don’t have. Its realistic now or in the next few years that you can expect the nature of every single idea organically created on things such as blogs to come to you. Maybe in 3-5 years a company like Google will help create something that collects all of the information you need in one place.
Until then using rss feeds and new sites such as http://zudos.com can help you search for the information you are looking for.
I think the better question is how big do you want your social network to be? If its going to be a large social network and you are interested in a lot of things, count on many different sites.
It is what makes us unique that so many people can be interested in so many things. It also of course makes it hard to organize all of that information from so many sources.
Check out this review of a mind mapping software to see the intriging ways you can organize information
http://mindmapping.typepad.com/the_mind_mapping_software/2007/03/review_calls_3d.html
-Mike
I think that those of us who are used to the collaborative tools of the web are missing the point: Ning, for all it’s simplicity, lets someone (an educator, let’s hope) network and blog who hasn’t done so before with a low learning threshold. If someone can’t really understand the transformative nature of the read/write web until they participate in it, and if the vast majority of educators are not participating but we want them to, then maybe we can use tools like Ning to help bring them in. Ning wasn’t developed for the David Warlicks and Will Richardsons of the world, and so to gage its value by how much it would help them isn’t accurate. Unfortunately, until those of us who are more vocal in the blogosphere are willing to rally around a good entry point, even if it’s not a “complete” solution, we actually end up keeping the barrier higher than most educators are prepared to overcome. 🙂
I LOVE Facebook!
P.S. Maybe people aren’t “getting” it, not because of the “technology” (because it’s all pretty user-friendly and simple), but because of the way you interact with people – your social nature. Don’t you reckon adults (generally) socialise with a different mechanism/expectation/time scale/curiosity than people of the “y” generation? Anyway, I don’t know. I just know I love Facebook! (I just hate myspace, but shhh)
P.P.S. I thought the point of Ning was so that you can create your own social network and not be bound by the likes of “guru” or “expert” – driven enterprises like Facebook or Bebo or Myspace or .. whatever. It’s nifty, no?
Steve Hargadon, Your point makes good sense to me that networking sites are good for newcomers. Except then I worry that perhaps they’ll become so used to these sites that they will never develop the skills to use Web 2.0 effectively. If I had started on a smaller social networking site, I’m not sure that I ever would have taken the leap to the rest of the web. There’s nothing so complicated out here that can’t be figured out in a short period of time. I would have been stuck in a closed in area without realizing what I was missing.
BABO
Andrew Pass
http://www.pass-ed.com/blogger.html
I’m still thinking about ning, but have already met several people that I would probably not have “run into” before that seem like they are working on similar things that I am. The library 2.0 network already has a lot of members, so maybe that is part of it, but I’ve met a few librarians in Classroom 2.0 also.
So although it is another “thing”, it also can be a good place to network if you need one. I also liked that there were a number of international contacts there.
An example of another use–one of our teachers is doing a project with student leaders from other schools, and has set up a “network” on ning that the students could use to network with each other. That, I think, is a great use of it.
Several on a couple of our campuses have joined and we might create our own private space as well, just because we can share some common items, and chat in a little bit more “informal” mode or share videos, photos, etc, just among ourselves, and it’s more casual than what we’d do on our blogs.
I think also that dabbling in different tools like this, as Janice mentioned, helps us understand what kids go to social networks for, or what interests them about them.
Maybe part of it is there are some redundant areas to the site, but it does seem like the entry page could be the home for a common conversation.
I’m going to give it a chance and see what happens, I think.
p.s. I don’t think people who even find out about Ning and then bother to register for it would just stay there and miss web 2.0 altogether. The reason they are there is probably because they know about web 2.0 already.
The other people probably won’t register in the first place, because having to create an account is too much trouble. Just my humble opinion 😉
As a college student I know the craze about Facebook. For most of us, Facebook is the virtual mall to hang out at and socialize. If we put in the time standing around on the virtual “corner” we get more from it. If one simply joins a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace and does not attempt to socialize, the effort to join would of course be fruitless.
For those of you here who blog consistently and receive decent responses and conversation, the need to migrate to a social network isn’t necessary – your social network is your blog. But if you are looking for a certain kind of community (a la ALA members on Ning), then a social networking site will work for you.
This kept me thinking late into the night, so I wrote about it at my blog.
“…I see a significant amount of potential in Ning. It really is the epitome of Web 2.0 as I see it…”
Check it out if you have a second.
http://www.thecorkboard.org/blog
Hi (from one of your friends),
I’ve done a lot of different things with technology over the years, but I hadn’t done social networks. It was one of the things I was looking for when I stumbled on read-write-web and discovered blogging in the classroom recently, so I’m a little in the dark too, but I will tell you as someone who is technologically proficient, but realtively new to this community (only around since December), it lets me meet and be in a group with folks like you who are more established (at least until you get pickier about who you accept friend invites from). I could use and aggregator, I do get some RSS feeds, but this is more direct in many ways. We’ll have to see how it goes though?
I will add my thoughts to the mix…I have to check so many things each day, that, I, too, feel like social networking sites are just another chore I have to complete. I do love having my information RSS’ed to me via Boglines, though. Digg and Slashdot rule!
That being said, I faithfully visit Facebook each day to keep up on my son and his friends (now that they are all freshman in college.) They can’t come to the house anymore, but we can still keep in touch…
On another note, I have spent an inordinate (read, lots!) of time in Second Life this week (my first real foray, BTW), and I am finding I like the synchronous social networking format, the same way I like iChat and Adobe Acrobat Connect. In SL, I can also make myself “busy” and visit all kinds of educational and professional areas on the Education, Cybary, and Info Islands all by my lonesome. I have attended great lectures and events, flown on a NOAA weather balloon, sailed off Nantucket, talked to many people I know in real life, and made some new friends from higher ed, library, ed tech, and the educational gaming community.
Maybe enhanced social networks like SL will become the norm…see you in there, Dave!
Kathy Schrock aka Kathy Dryburgh
What Kyle said. =)
(what you get out is what you put in… though some people are willing to give more without expecting anything in return!)
Dave:
I agree. I’m getting bored with the “next new thing”.
Doctoral dissertation: Put teachers in two separate groups. One group joins the stopcyerbullying network. Other group has no access to network. Which group shows better student “achievement” in preventing cyberbullying?
It would be interesting to find out if any of this does anything. Should we be spending less time reading/writing (and I spend too much) and more time with our students/families? I think there may be a tipping point and many of us are beggining to contract our network/readers to a more trusted and managable level.
I made a facebook account so that I could communicate with my college kids – they don’t seem to check their college emails, only their facebook accounts. When I am on facebook, I feel like a voyeur, rather like I am the parent peeking in on a college party. I like your analogy of the clubhouse. I don’t see too many people my age (50+) on facebook – and I only have one friend:( I signed up for a myspace account so that I could learn the tool. Not too user friendly. I forget to check either account on a regular basis…
Hi David – Having read your blog post and taken a look at the Ning Social Networking area ( and having joined a few ), I thought that I would add my thoughts to the growing discussion.
As with many others who have been finding their way with Web 2.0 over the past few months, I quess that I have built up my own social network using an aggregator such as Bloglines, and a personal contact group using tools such as Skype, and by leaving comments on blogs of friends and acquaintances.
I can see the Ning areas as a useful meeting point, however it is ‘another’ area to check out and I wonder how much it will ‘stick’. That will depend a great deal on the quality of the discussion and the degree of networking that actually takes place.
I also think that it will be mainly those ‘in the know’ who will find their way there ( as is evident at present – where there are some very familiar names in the members list ) – I don’t think that ‘newbies’ will find the Ning area easily and may well feel reticent about joining the group.
I can see this as another one of your ‘ sidetracks’ but the jury is out as to whether these resources will become a part of the mainstream thinking or whether it will become just another area amongst the miriad which are being developed daily …. we will see!
I had not been interested in social networks myself. Not in a MySpace “Here I am come check me out†way. But recently I have tried Second Life, which I view as sort of a social, yet anonymous network. I tried it because ISTE has a virtual site there and I am hooked. I have met a number of folks from around the country who are interested in ed tech. I have even met ISTE’s president and Kathy Schrock. ISTE schedules events there and lots of virtual folks come. It is quite fascinating. It is the visual that gets me hooked. I feel like I am really hanging out at a social event and meeting people. So, is this a social network or something else?
Thanks for sharing