Ning and Wiggio - Should we adopt a Ning

From LiteracyTentWiki

Subject: [PD 5017] Culminating Discussions - Using Social Media - Ning
From: Helaine Marshall
Date: Tue Aug 3 10:12:58 EDT 2010

Dear Small Groups,

I participated in the Ning group, the Twitter group, and the live Adobe Connect workshops provided by the Google Group.

This has been a whirlwind experience! I can say that I now have a much better idea of how these tools work, although how they can work specifically for my PD and/or my classes - is TBD (something yet to be determined).

Questions for Ning group:

  • What were some successes you encountered learning and using this social media tool?

Ning: I was able to set up my Page and customize it and to see others' pages too. This helped build a sense of community. I also learned about the "recent activity" feature, which helped me see what was new since I had been to the Ning.

  • What were some considerations or challenges you faced?

Ning has changed its policy and I didn't want to have to do a 30-day trial and then cancel before they billed me - so I never set up my own Ning as requested for our group.

I was a bit confused with the YouTube postings mixed in with us - and who was doing which - there didn't seem to be a separation of the two groups - just a separate discussion for one of the forums

  • What are your recommendations for using this tool in teaching or professional development?

Ning looks great and very functional for planning projects, building community, etc. ; however, since it is no longer free - except for a mini version with the Pearson ad showing on it - we may need to look elsewhere. The advantage of Ning is that it brings together in one place the many functions we need to facilitate an online group.

  • For what purpose(s)-if any-do you plan to use this tool in your practice?

I would use it as the main site for a project, or for a class.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity that AALPD has provided, and, as a result of this summer experiment, I plan to join the Technology list also! :)

Laine

Helaine W. Marshall, Ph.D.

Director of Language Education Programs
Westchester Graduate Campus
Long Island University

Subject: [Tech & DL 2793] Re: Cross post [PD 5017] Culminating Discussions -Using Social Media - Ning
From: Ball, Patrice
Date: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 10:56 AM

PD groups:

As one of the facilitators of the Ning list and having started doing it in the middle, I did find it challenging to get discussions started. I think the biggest problem was that Ning started to charge for their services right when this group was starting up and people were unwilling to hand over a credit card number for even a free trial. Some people did put up their own picture and posted videos and asked some questions. I tried to point out several great Ning sites where they could see the potential of using Ning in the classroom, but I didn't receive any feedback as to whether people checked them out. That was how I learned about Ning myself. I visited other educational sites and looked at some of the things they were doing and asked questions on their discussion lists.

There are a lot of social media sites out there and not all will prosper. Even Ning, which was one of the larger sites, found that eventually they had to charge a fee to continue. I myself will continue to use Ning for many reasons; it's versatility, ease of use, look and feel, lots of features, ability to integrate with other social media sites if you choose, and the fact that if I were to switch to another site, eventually, they will probably have to charge money also and there is always a cost with free. The amount of tools will dwindle either from lack of use of being bought out by one of the larger sites.

Being in an edtech position, I spend a great deal of time looking at tools and evaluating them and then making decisions about recommending them. There are different tools for different purposes. When deciding on what to use, you need to think about what you want to use it for, what things do you absolutely need to have, and what things are you willing to sacrifice. Things to consider whether you need or not: member profiles, blog, wikis, discussion groups, shared calendar, photos, videos, music, extra widgets that you can add, chat, video chat, privacy, etc., Also, consider the site itself; smaller, unknown sites will probably not make it, although they may be bought out or a larger company will find things that they were doing valuable and add it to their sites.

Personally, I find myself using Twitter for more and more things. I can't believe the versatility. I use it for two purposes, education and music enjoyment, both sharing and giving. I use Facebook almost totally for social discussions. I use Ning as a place where I can store and offer Professional Development resources to the field (in my work). I use both Delicious and Diigo for bookmarking, although I usually save my resources in Delicious and get resources from Diigo.

Hope this lengthy email helps others.

Patty Ball, Reg. Technology Coordinator
NorthEast SABES c/o NECC
Lawrence MA

Hi everyone,

Yes, I use Ning as a resource area where I store materials for Critical Thinking assignments. Currently I have requested one of the Pearson scholarships available to educators to keep their Ning site up and running. Pearson has volunteered to scholarship some educational Web sites as long as the site advertises that they sponsor it and that one of their staff is in the site. The cost is $2.95/month for the Ning mini membership for anyone willing to pay on their own as well. You can look at my site and see what we did with the forum & discussion as well as view the videos and other information I put in the site for a resource for the students.

http://thinkingcritically.ning.com/

Also, please feel free to join the site and use any of the tools you find in there. The site is open to anyone interested to join in the conversation, which is the great thing about Ning.

Thanks,

Tina

Subject: [PD 5028] Reflecting on using social media tools with students
From: Debra Morris Smith
Date: Wed Aug 4 11:04:11 EDT 2010

<<snip>>

6. I'm hoping to use Wiggio for staff communications. Currently we use Nicenet, but Wiggio offers more ability to format text, more options, and easier navigation, I think. The downside is getting the whole staff to make the move; technology doesn't come easy to a lot of our teachers, and they are used to Nicenet. Ning would be nice here, but it's less user-friendly up front than Wiggio, and I am unclear how to access the free mini version for educators and don't want to give them a credit card number.

Debbie Smith
Parkway Area AEL
St. Louis County, MO

Subject: [PD 5048] Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Jackie A. Taylor
Date: Thu Aug 5 11:35:00 EDT 2010

Hi Patty, Catherine, and All,

Patty, I agree. Having Ning switch to a fee-based structure in the middle of our small group work was unfortunate and I think did impact the group's ability to explore the usefulness of it as a professional development tool. Catherine also mentioned that she wanted to explore successes and challenges other professional developers faced in using Ning with practitioners.

I also think the resources that Richard and Patty shared with the Ning group, and the resources that Kristi et al shared in the Ning as a part of the You Tube group are valuable and we don't want to lose them when Ning starts charging on August 20 (http://smpd-abe.ning.com/).

Consider this question: should we, as an (inter)national online Community of Practice, adopt a Ning?

We seem to like the idea of breaking into small groups to pursue our learning goals. Several of us here discussed the challenges of learning more than one technology platform to achieve a learning goal. For example, the Twitter group needed a "space" to collaborate in order to learn Twitter; the You Tube group needed a collaboration space not affiliated with You Tube.

Similarly, AALPD often hosts online activities in conjunction with the annual AALPD PreConference at COABE. Some preconference follow up activities occur here on the PD List. Others occur in small groups outside of the PD List, in preparation for precon.

I can see us (the PD List) adopting a Ning in affiliation with the PD List to provide us a consistency in tech experience with respect to small group work and to support the work of the AALPD preconference and other task forces.

Perhaps AALPD will pay for the first year of an experimental Ning for AALPD Members and the PD List. Maybe some of us might like to pitch in time or resources to get it up and running. Then we will all be on one platform so in the future we can use it for small group purposes where applicable. We would still keep the PD List as our main communication vehicle, I'm just suggesting one common platform to affiliate with the List in order to better facilitate collaboration.

It would also provide us a space to create individual profiles that could also link to our other professional social media resources so we can find each other in order to network. If we like it, we could expand, such as inviting ALTN and the Tech List to join us.

But before coming to a decision, I think we need to hear from more of us on the benefits and challenges of using Ning for professional development.

1) What are the benefits and challenges?
2) Should we adopt an experimental Ning for one year for future collaborative work?

Jackie

Jackie Taylor
PD List Facilitator
Jackie at jataylor.net

Subject: [PD 5049] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Ball, Patrice
Date: Thu Aug 5 11:49:31 EDT 2010

Ning

I think you know how I feel about this. Absolutely yes.... With Ning, you can set up individual groups that can explore and share knowledge about all the other tools. You can integrate Twitter with it; embed Youtube videos (and other videos), have live chat, video chat (with widgets), individual member profiles and so much more. I would be glad to help with any training" that people need to learn it, although, the learning curve is very short with Ning. I have turned several non-techie teachers and administrators on to it and they were able to set up their own sites in less than 5 minutes.

Anyway, that's my two cents!

Patty Ball, Reg. Technology Coordinator
NorthEast SABES c/o NECC
78 Amesbury St. Lawrence MA

Subject: [PD 5050] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Kimberly A. Johnson
Date: Thu Aug 5 12:00:18 EDT 2010

Would Wiggio be preferable to Ning? I'm new to both, but Wiggio seems to offer the same features without a cost.

Kimberly Johnson
Hamline University, St Paul, MN

Subject: [PD 5051] Yes: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Paul Rogers
Date: Thu Aug 5 12:24:34 EDT 2010

I just signed on to the BC Literacy Forum "powered by NING".

I do not know much about it but my impression is very favorable mainly because it is so easy to navigate from one discussion to another and to view all the discussions. All the members have their profiles available etc., etc.


Paul Rogers
Adult Biliteracy: wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Main_Page
PUMAROSA.COM

Subject: [PD 5053] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Ball, Patrice
Date: Thu Aug 5 12:43:44 EDT 2010

Wiggio is similar, but not as feature rich.

Patty Ball, Reg. Technology Coordinator
NorthEast SABES c/o NECC
Lawrence MA

Subject: [PD 5054] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Ball, Patrice
Date: Thu Aug 5 12:52:06 EDT 2010

Check out these two great Ning examples to see the possibilities:

http://www.classroom20.com/
http://eflclassroom.ning.com/

Patty Ball, Reg. Technology Coordinator
NorthEast SABES c/o NECC
Lawrence MA

Subject: [PD 5055] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Tracey Hosselkus
Date: Thu Aug 5 13:04:06 EDT 2010

I would go for the free one as long as it meets the needs.

Tracey

Subject: [PD 5057] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Holly Dilatush
Date: Thu Aug 5 17:22:48 EDT 2010

Very interesting comments shared by several on this topic. I personally liked Nings (notice the past tense?) until their recent shenanigans with fees.

But, what I want to comment on is in response to Patty Ball's comment, " I have turned several non-techie teachers and administrators on to it and they were able to set up their own sites in less than 5 minutes"

This past January, a group of six moderators tried Nings with an online workshop -- the workshop used a YahooGroup as a homebase (had been using YG for years), and then breakout groups to Nings. Nings were new to most of the group, and definitely not easy for the majority who tried them. The technology was not the focus of our workshop, our six-week workshop had no face-to-face (it was completely online). We tried to provide assistance. But evaluations strongly indicated that the Nings were a detraction rather than a plus.

Of course, there are a lot of details not covered in this brief email -- and lots of other factors, known and unknown -- but the "non-techies" in our group found nings quite confusing, as did two of the co-moderators who were enthused about trying them.

From my experiences, I'm "on the fence" about whether or not a Ning is the way to go.

Holly (Dilatush) Charlottesville, VA USA

Subject: [PD 5066] Re: Should we adopt a Ning?
From: Nell Eckersley
Date: Fri Aug 6 22:52:58 EDT 2010

Hi all,

My first experience with a online collaboration tool was with Ning and I like it. I liked that I could brand it, I could play around with design elements and "widgets" (tools),I post photos and have robust and threaded discussion. But I also found that I was taking a lot of time setting up each group-because I was having so much fun with all the options. I also found that some users were daunted by what seem like a very busy lay out, and that most people didn't spend much time creating their own profiles, another tool that Ning provides.

Then I was introduced to Wiggio through a mobile learning Wiggio created by David Rosen. The interface is simple, there area set number of tools which I can neither take out nor add to. Once I log into Wiggio I can access all my groups without having to log in to each group separately (as I would in Ning). I really liked the shared calendar on Wiggio and that I can sync it with my google calendar. I can set up a group very quickly and users seem to get the hang of the interface pretty quickly. Also, users seem to really like the ability to receive and respond to discussion posts through their email rather than having to log-in to the site. Wiggio can also s end out reminders for items on the calendar and let group members know when a new file or link has been posted. On the down side, the groups can only be accessed if you have the name and password for the group-so they can never be very public. In Ning I have the option to make the group public and private and I can search for other public Ning groups, another thing you cannot do in Wiggio). The discussion section on the home page of Wiggio is not as easy to search as Ning, and many users miss the fact that you can give your post a subject line.

Wiggio does not allow for very much hierarchy. The role of administrator does include some editing privileges, but the administrators posts show up the same as a non-administrators' posts. Ning can be set up so that the administrator takes on a larger facilitator role so that they can more clearly direct what action is happening.

I think both platforms are great, but I think it's good to think through what you want to be able to do with your group before picking the platform. For the collaborative platform we are talking about, the fact that Ning can be accessed by the public might be a good place to start. Is our group going to be open to the general public at some point? If yes, then Ning makes better sense. IF no, then I would tend to support Wiggio. The other tool that I wonder about is the ease of searching through and responding to threads in a discussion. Ning has a more robust discussion board and maybe users can be alerted when something is posted there, but if threaded discussions aren't so important. I do know that Wiggio allows for users to receive and respond to posts via email and that can increase participation compared to requiring users to login to the platform in order to participate.

Best,

Nell

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