To Learn Twice

I just sent this email out to my staff about the change in NINGs The following announcement is important for those that use NING at school: Pearson recently announced that they would be sponsoring Mini NING's for up to 3 years. If you are using a NING for school purposes, you can apply to have the cost covered by Pearson here . Once you apply for sponsorship Pearson will contact you to allow them access to your NING. Once they review the NING they will let you know if they will sponsor it. If for some reason you are denied, or you do not want to allow Pearson to view your content, you will be required to close your NING or pay a monthly cost to keep it open. How are you handling this? Any complaints from anyone yet on having to let Pearson into the blog, or for having someone sponsor it?

A long, long time ago... I can still remember How that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people dance And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while. But February made me shiver With every paper I’d deliver. Bad news on the doorstep; I couldn’t take one more step. I can’t remember if I cried When I read about his widowed bride, But something touched me deep inside The day the music Nings died. I was greeted this morning by an English department chair in all black. She is mourning the loss of Ning. Although yesterday’s announcement is not good news, it is not unexpected or the end of classroom collaboration in a social networking environment. My Grandfather was famous for using the saying “if it is too good to be true, it probably is” and I grew up hearing the phrase, so when it comes to stuff at no cost I am always cautious. For those of you that know me as Google Fan Boy #1” this may come as a surprise statement, but I always ...

I am presenting at TechForum Midwest tomorrow with Jon Orech and Scott Meech. It should make for a fun morning. My portion of the presentation is on Nings in education for collaboration. Here is what I am going to use: Ning: About Ning: http://about.ning.com/ Ning Demo Video: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/27/ning-demo-video/ Examples (Some of these are not public indicated by ): Professional Collaboration · Classroom 2.0: http://www.classroom20.com/ (For those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education) · School CTO http://schoolcto.ning.com/ (A place for discussion and sharing around topics impacting technology decision makers in schools) · IEAR http://ieducationappsreview.ning.com/ (Taking a closer look at the educational value of ITouch / IPhone / IPods in the classroom) Teacher to Teacher Collaboration: · Maine South English Department http://msenglishdept.ning.com/ · Maine Ea...