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. :)

Thing 16 - wikis

Wiki's have eenormous potential, especially for today's student who wants high tech, high touch learning. It is something I am seriously going to try to implement in the library this year. I never really took off with my web page the way I wanted to, and Edline is too restrictive, so I am going all out for a wiki through pb wiki. Ad free is the real selling point with me and with parents at our private school. I'll try to remember to add a link here when I have my page set up. I hope it will generate a database of student book reviews, give access to my calendar for all parents to see and teachers to update as necessary, allow student research log-type feedback, in short, do everything I wanted my web page to do, but interactively.

I think it will be an important tool for our younger students as well, those who typically do not have email. Here is a way to contribute to the discussion on any computer, with just a user name and password. I think it will make parents feel safer and allow more access by the students. I saw a cute 4th grade classroom wiki at Edington House School via a link from Vicki Davis' blog A Library by any Other Name.

Found a new wiki entry to star as a favortie NECClibrarians08 seminar. It's almost like being there!