A year in Ning

[Simon Brown]

It’s now a year since I started this, my first Ning network. At this time last year, I was searching for interactive ways to connect with colleagues outside the institution’s Intranet /email system that I found so constricting. It’s been an interesting journey along which I’ve developed new communication skills, and expanded my network of like-minded friends.

Expanding the VeMentoring network
When I started this Ning network, I considered only my VeMentoring friends, but then quickly discovered other progressive educators around Australia and overseas. I learned about their communication tools and techniques, and how they were applying them in their classrooms. I joined other educators’ networks, added friends and posted messages, photos and videos on their web spaces.

Social web tools
In conversation with friends, I discovered many new software platforms such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Protopage, PageFlakes, SlideShare, Del.icio.us… it’s a long list. All of these tools encourage online interaction between users – just what I needed to establish my online presence. I learned how to operate in these spaces just by immersing myself in conversations, and then asking for help from my network when I experienced difficulties. My investment of a broadband connection fee and my own time in the evenings has paid off, giving me a wide range of digital skills at my fingertips.

Using social web tools with students
After I gained confidence using a few social web tools, I decided to engage my students with interactive tasks in their own web space. Unfortunately, the time is not yet right to do this. Until the department unblocks ‘sharing’ Internet web sites, students must be content with the authoritative, one-way version of information dissemination.

Building an online network
Although my circle of friends is ever-increasing, I’ve noticed that a certain few are constant, especially friends from Australia and New Zealand. Recently, Sue Tapps (an educator in Victoria) suggested that educators in Australia and New Zealand meet virtually face-to-face each week using Flashmeeting. Sue started a Diigo group to coordinate our meetings, and we use a wiki to update meeting information. Sue has arranged four meetings so far, with a different moderator each week. Flashmeeting is a useful platform because meetings can be recorded for immediate playback.

Using email effectively
Using wikis, blogs and RSS feeds means that email is used sparingly. Mostly, my personal emails are limited to notifications about comments requiring moderation, or requests from people wanting to join groups. Otherwise, communications take place when I visit friends’ sites after they update information - I am notified of this activity when I visit my mash-up page listing their RSS feeds – or through Twitter, which is in itself a form of RSS feed for instant messages.

My next year
Now that opportunities are opening in ResourceBank and my.TAFE I am trying to imagine how I will be using social web tools in a year’s time. I know that my professional conversation will continue, further assisting my skills development.