Skip to main content

House Hunting: Social Networks

By

In my quest to find a Web 2.0 tool to share, I kept in mind our homeless tribe. With that in mind, I went out "house" hunting to find a "house" that was free and open in architecture. What I mean by open architecture is a system that provides multiple functions to meet our current needs and is able to grow with us in the future. I know we mentioned Ning in the past, so I started there and will be the focus of this post.

Ning lets you create your own social network and offers many features like: blogs, videos, wikis, events, music, rss, chat and more. I really liked the all in one feel and not having to go to separate sites to post to a blog or watch a video. The all in one feel and many features provide a good structure for the "house" and the strategies implemented will make it "livable."

I also found it was very easy to create and administer a Ning social network. You can check out the test Ning social network I created at: http://ksdlohana.ning.com.

On a side note, I also found an open source social networking solution at: http://grou.ps/introduction.php?f=1&from=footer&g=tpl_socialbeans. I started to build a social network using this site, but ended up using Ning. You can see this social network at: http://grou.ps/ksdl.

Comments

Komarey said…
Mahalo Clinton for sharing. I've seen a lot of Ning sites and I do agree that they have a lot of flexibility and the convenience of housing the basic elements of social networking. It's easy to follow and follows the same basic structure as most sites do. It's easy to join other networks as well. I do like the look and feel of it as well. The feeds page is clean and easy to scan. I hope this house will fit our needs as we grow and build our tribe. Thanks for doing the research.
September 9, 2009 at 2:48 PM
Dorothy said…
Great owau topic. I'm a part of a few other Ning sites, but haven't really participated actively as a Ning member. I think the features of being able to pull in RSS, videos, photos, chat, etc. would be a plus as we begin looking at various strategies to keep our tribe members connected. Mahalo Clinton for sharing.
September 10, 2009 at 9:51 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Geotagging

By
A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe...
6 comments
Read more

Avatar Chat

By
Aloha all, Here's my o wau topic for this week. We all know the power of the Avatar and their popularity with our learners from our A`o Makua courses and I know we have discussed ways to incorporate them into our `Ike Hawai`i classes as well. Well, I can't take credit for finding this resource. Our resident Avatar expert a.k.a. Christy told me to check it out because Avatars can now chat. So please join me in finding out what other engaging and motivating feats these amazing characters can do to help us provide meaningful learning experiences for all our students. You can read about OddCast and their AvatarSpace or go to their Web site and test out some of these features. I'm hoping that this may provide us with a motivating way to get students, in both programs, to participate in some cooperative learning and sharing. Let me know what you think and if you feel this would be a valuable application to use. Mahalo - look forward to reading your responses! Kelly
5 comments
Read more

Zoho Creator

By
I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both...
6 comments
Read more