Thing 22 - Nings

At first, I was confused about the differences between nings and wikis, but this project helped clear this up for me. The wiki is a collaborative group of web pages like an intranet,l not meant to be static. A ning is designed around a social networking purpose, and members upload a static version of what they want to share, while allowing discussion. The extent of collaboration by participants is different in nature because the purpose of the site is different. So you would use a wiki to produce maybe a story together, or to research a topic. But you would use a ning for a classroom to allow students to upload their completed videos, etc... to share with classmates for discussion. I did create a wiki, but not a ning yet until I check with my school IT. I won't create one unless I can use it with my school population. In theory, it could make my library web page function like an interactive, collaborative, library web page.

I am in an elementary school and saw an elementary group on teacher librarian ning (which I joined primarily for professional development), but not on the Texas school librarian ning, (which I also joined because I enjoy Shonda Brisco's postings on the different listservs and my 5th grade students are almost middle school and soon need to function in middle school).

Oh, and I had to open a facebook account -- finally. My two college sons have mixed feelings about it as you can imagine. :)