I presented this weekend at the annual New York State School Boards conference, held at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Manhattan. It was a great, receptive group, although (and this happens often) a few faces were quizzical and downright skeptical. Nevertheless, there were many questions from the standing-room-only audience and I truly appreciate the interested many people have in Web 2.0 and social media.
School leaders are always a tough sell, but I’ve noticed a dramatic difference in the way everyone has become a bit more willing to suspend their disbelief about PR tools like Facebook and Twitter.
If you’d like to take a look, my presentation, Communicating in a Web 2.0 World, is available on my Slideshare page.

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Here I am in beautiful San Francisco, where humidity has been banished forever, or so it seems, and cable cars are passing by my hotel window.

Oh yes, and this is a business trip — the annual National School Public Relations Association Conference. I will be presenting tomorrow morning on a topic near and dear to my heart — “Using Web 2.0 and Social Media to Reach Your Audience.” I’m hoping to persuade school PR people to jump on the Web 2.0 train before it’s too late!

Here’s a link to the presentation, which is now available on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/evelynmccormack.

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I know that I’ve written about Nings for educators before, but I was recently asked by the National School PR Association to write a description of how Nings can be useful for anyone as a tool for social networking. The key thing to remember about using Ning as a social network platform (for adults) is that it’s NOT Facebook or MySpace. Although I have a fairly active Facebook page for professional and personal use, adults I speak to often cringe at the mere thought of creating a Facebook account.

So Nings are friendly, but generally free of rock music downloads, college drinking photos and references to “Jackass” and “The Real World.”

Here’s my description of how Nings can be used by thoughtful adults, along with links to several to which I can claim membership:

Using a Ning to Build a Network

Nings have become an increasingly popular way to network with other people and groups who share similar interests with you and your school district. Ning currently hosts more than 500,000 networks on the web, and that number is growing.

Ning provides free, easy-to-navigate online software that allows you to create a social networking website available to a larger group of members. Once created, it can be used as a platform for sharing best practices, links, photos, videos and other information. Generally, the success of a Ning depends entirely on its members and how they use it.

Here are a few examples of how you can use a Ning:

• PR departments can use a Ning site to share publications and news items about a school district with anyone who signs up as a member (parents, students, staff).

• School district administrative and leadership teams can work together and communicate via a Ning, and avoid having to use long email lists and attachments to share information.

• PTAs can create Nings for members.

• Teachers can create a Ning for their department, their school, their district, or for fellow teachers around the country.

Nings can be used for small niche networks (teachers within a department, for example) or in a larger way (national or state public relations professionals).You can set the privacy level, restricting membership by invitation only or keeping it open to anyone who wants to join. Free Ning tools include discussion forums, chats, video sharing, photo sharing, link sharing, and more. You can also set the frequency with which you’ll receive updates from your Ning groups.

The Ning Premium service, at $19.95 a month, allows you to point your Ning to a domain name and to add or delete advertising, among other details. But the free service fits most groups well. You can also choose the domain name option for $4.95 a month.

Here in the Hudson Valley region of New York, we have created a group Ning for school public relations professionals, where we can share best practices and put our collective brain trust together on such topics as the local press, school budget challenges, and upcoming meetings. We have also created several subgroups within the Ning, including one on using technology.

Here are links to the Hudson Valley PR Ning and other sample Nings on the web:

Classroom 2.0 (A professional development Ning for teachers with 18,000 members)

http://www.classroom20.com/

PR Open Mic (A Ning for PR students, faculty members and practitioners with 4,100 members.

http://www.propenmic.org/

The Hurricane Information Center (a Ning for individuals interested in hurricane updates, with 700 members)

http://gustav08.ning.com/

The HudSPRA Network (A newly created Ning created for school PR professionals in the NY Hudson Valley region.)

http://hudspra.ning.com/ (We might be creating a new domain name for this site, so if this link doesn’t work, try http://www.hudspra.org.)

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OK, so maybe I shouldn’t be sacriligious about this.

But you have to admit, it’s pretty Web 2.0-cool when the Vatican launches its own YouTube channel, and that’s exactly what happened on Friday. Pope Benedict XVI joined President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II in launching his own channel, the latest effort by the folks in Rome to reach out to the digital generation. (It probably won’t work on my college-age kids, however.)

At a Vatican news conference, an executive of Google Inc., parent company of YouTube, joined with the Catholic clergy to announce that the Vatican had posted its first 12 videos on the pope’s new YouTube channel. The Church hopes to publish three new videos each day.

“This is in particular directed towards the young, but not exclusively,” said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See. “This is a step toward better communication. The pope encouraged us to adopt new ways of communication in order to reach out to the people who are interested in the pope’s message.”

Initially, the new YouTube channel will post videos in four languages — Italian, English, German and Spanish — and more languages will be added later.

Way to go, Ben!

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When I present to school districts about Web 2.0 tools and technology, I often run afoul of the firewall in a given school district and can’t use the system to display these tools.

So how are teachers working around overprotective content filters to use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom?

Edutopia’s piece, written by Suzie Boss, advocates four steps teachers can take to teach in spite of the system:

1. Befriend the keymaster

2. Innovate in Safe Places

3. Teach Good Digital Citizenship

4. Advocate for Access

Here’s what Antero Garcia, a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School System, says about putting up walls to keep Web 2.0 out of the classroom:

“Sooner or later someone is going to expect my students to be able to quickly and effortlessly post to a blog, add to a wiki, or collaborate via some sort of social-networking protocol. And once again, my school will have failed to prepare them for such a task.”

Word to the wise.

]]> http://nylady.edublogs.org/2008/11/18/teaching-around-the-firewall/feed/ 2 http://nylady.edublogs.org/2008/11/12/nings-for-educators/ http://nylady.edublogs.org/2008/11/12/nings-for-educators/#comments Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:48:51 +0000 nylady http://nylady.edublogs.org/?p=175 I have recently discovered Nings, social networking sites for people of similar interests. You can see a few of my Ning memberships in my sidebar — the Website Owner Zone, Twitter GoGetters, etc. Nings are great platforms for communicating with other people who share your passions, to share links to great sites, to announce events and conferences, and more. You can also start your own blog on these Nings, or cross-post from your blog to the Ning for others to read.

Each of these social networks was created by someone who signed up for an account on Ning, created a network, and then invited in friends, colleagues, and/or students to interact around specific educational topics.

There are dozens of Nings out there for educators, so I thought I’d share a few with you and encourage you to explore them and think about joining. You can get email updates once you become a member and it’s a useful way to share best practices in education.

1. The Global Education Collaborative

This is an online community for teachers and students who are interested in joining global education projects. With more than 800 members, the site encourages users to post media, blogs, and ideas for advancing collaborative education worldwide. Some of the groups-within-the-group include “Global Awareness Curriculum,” “Student-Driven Podcasts,” and “Primary Teachers Collaborating.”

2. Classroom 2.0

This is a social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.
“Beginners” are encouraged to become “part of the digital dialog”. This is a very active Ning, with more than 13,000 members and lots of resources designed for digitally savvy teachers and administrators.

3. School 2.0

This Ning describes its purpose as “a larger discussion of how education, learning, and our physical school spaces can (or should) change because of the changing nature of our social and economic lives brought on by these technologies.” There is also a wiki associated with the site, which you can find at www.School20.net.

4. Independent School Educators Network

This 1,200-member network shares tips and share best practices in classroom technology. It also has a list-serv you can subscribe to at ISED list-serv, the SchoolComputing Wiki, an ISE group on Flickr, and join in the conversation at EdTechTalk.com.

5. Ning in Education

A general education Ning with more than 2,000 members. If you’re looking for a place to share general information, tips and to seek out advice, this is the place to go.

6. Coming of Age

This site was established to enable people to meet and discuss “Coming of Age: An Introduction to the NEW Worldwide Web,” an ebook about blogging, podcasting, and other applications, and how they can be used in the classroom. You can also get your free copy of the eBook at this Ning site.

7. Smart Board Revolution

An example of how specific Ning groups can be. This 500-member community shares best practices, tips, ideas and lesson plans on using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. A great idea.

8. Teachers 2.0

This Ning of more than 200 members who help one another to learn and use technology tools ranging from PowerPoint to Web 2.0.

The good news is that if you haven’t found a Ning to your exact liking, you can start one of your own. And Ning has recently launched an ad-free platform specifically for educators.

Here’s a very tool video about setting up a Ning, geared specifically for educators, from falconphysics on YouTube:

Image by cambodia4kidsorg via Flickr

OK, if this isn’t a teachable moment, I don’t know what is.

Another giant in the social media world, Twitter, will be making Election Day instantaneously more interesting for anyone who wants to follow along as-it-happens or wants to keep a wary eye on the day’s voting operations.

Calling all teachers! What a great lesson for high school students on Tuesday.  Log on and watch the action.

Specifically, Twitter has created  Twitter Vote Report to assemble reactions and reports from Twitter users, whether they’re standing on a long line to vote, watching TV reports, or experiencing something unusual at the polls. You can use the Twitter “hashtag” #votereport for tracking tweets and to participate.

You can also do any one of the following, according to Twitter:

If you currently use Twitter, send a message after you vote that begins with #votereport (this is critically important for ensuring that your message gets to the right place.) Then write some or all of the following:

#[zip code] to indicate where you’re voting; ex., “#12345″

#machine for machine problems; ex., “#machine broken, using prov. ballot”

#reg for registration troubles; ex., “#reg I wasn’t on the rolls”

#wait:minutes for long lines; ex., “#wait:120 and I’m coming back later”

#good or #bad to give a quick sense of your overall experience

#EP+your state if you have a serious problem and need help from the Election Protection coalition; ex., #EPOH

If you want to use your cell phone, you can also text messages to 66937 and begin your message with #votereport.

I hope we can all report in that things were #good.

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Fuelmyblog and Blurb are teaming up this month to create a global cookbook. Any blogger who has joined up with Fuelmyblog as a member can contribute a traditional recipe (they prefer recipes that are generic to your location in the world) and photos to be included in their Global Cookbook. Fuelmyblog says their membership represents just about every country in the world.

At the top of this post, you can see one page from Fuelmyblog’s last book venture, “The Human Behind The Avatar,” also published on Blurb.

All bloggers need to do is send in the recipe and photos taken of the completed dish, and Blurb will actually compile the book. Blurb is a web company that allows anyone to create customized books by downloading their free software and then creating books. Blurb is known for the high quality of their books. The actual printed version of your book is what you pay for.

Recipes should be sent to: cookbook@fuelmyblog.com. You need to include your name for credit and the URL of your blog. The top 10 recipes in the book get a free copy of the cookbook from Blurb. Fuelmyblog members can also get a 10% discount off their first purchase from Blurb.

Hurry to participate. The deadline is Nov. 30 and the cookbook will be ready in time for the holidays.

Last year, the FMB community created a book called “The Human Behind The Avatar” (you can take a look here). It was a great initiative and we have had hundreds of great comments.

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