Connected Educator Month @iES
Day 18 - Social Networking
Social Networking
Most are familiar with online social networks such as Facebook, but thousands of niche social networks have been designed for people with specific interests. For example, online social networks can help you find your next job, help you parent—or help you as an educator. Ning is a powerful tool that allows anyone to create a specialized online social network for a few dollars a month, or you can join any of the thousands of Ning communities for free.
Social networks on Ning can feature discussion forums, blogs, photo and video sharing, widgets from other websites (small representations of applications that you put on a webpage for specific information or functionality, similar to apps for smartphones) such as Google and Twitter, and an RSS reader to share blog feeds from outside of Ning (such as your Edublog feed).
- Visit the Classroom 2.0 Ning and click “sign up” on the right side of the screen. Follow the signup process. Fill out your profile on the site (add your photo and some personal details).
- Take a look around the community and see what sparks your interest. Maybe there’s a group you’d like to join, or a discussion to comment on.
- Find a link, a discussion, or a topic that interests you, and write a post about it on your blog.
- Check out Edmodo. Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Edmodo connects more than 8,000,000 teachers and students in secure social networks.
- Edweb is a professional social network for the education community. It allows you to connect with colleagues, create learning communities, share and collaborate, and mentor new teachers. Check it out.
- Check out the brand new social networking site called edConnectr. Click on the edConnectr logo, then tell us about yourself, your interests, and what you’d like to learn about. edConnectr will find other educators who can teach you things relevant to your interests, or who could learn from you. From there, connect and collaborate.
That's all for today! Tomorrow we’ll explore some month-long forums from Connected Educator Month.