Nings

This past week has been very informative as to how Nings can be useful in the professional setting. I can't see it of much help to students at the elementary level at this stage. They would rather be in their gaming websites than in a collaborative Ning anyway. Nings are considered social networking sites and our schools are blocked from them. I did find, after hours of searching, a good Ning that I'm following and participating in, the Library 2.0 Ning. I did find that the videos are now able to be searched, as you have to put the word "video" in the search area in the upper right hand corner. Then the videos can be seen.

As far as the Web 2.0 applications are concerned, I do think that there are a lot of applications out there that can be used by the everyone. All they need to do is to learn about the directory. If I wouldn't have learned about it in this class, I'd be searching tremendously for applications that we could use. There are so many things out there for us to use, however, many are not fit to be used in the educational setting. Most need an email address. There are some out there for the younger students, but without an email address, they wouldn't be able to use them. Perhaps this is to make the parents aware, as well, as to what is out there for their child/ren to get into, especially if they are unsupervised. I do think, with all the information available for free, one wouldn't have to spend a cent to get something worthwhile to use.

On a further note, we did use DimDim to get together with our group this past week. It was a good experience, but would have been better if the microphone I had would have accessed the site. We had been on this site before with Louie and the experience was about the same. It's hard to read and follow the discussion at the same time. I could see where I could use this feature when participating in a collaborative discussion with the other librarians in the district, but I'd much rather meet in person. It's great for long distance learners, however, and I could see myself teaching other students how to use this feature on the web to collaborate on their projects. They'd probably love the idea! Once again, though, not all my students have access to the Internet. I asked students yesterday if they had access to the Internet by a show of hands and found a few hands that didn't get raised. DimDim reminds me of the cartoon show, The Jetson's". They had a video conference every time they answered the "phone"! As much as I think we're in close to living in the Jetson's era, I still haven't seen that hover car. When I do, and everyone has one, then I'll know for sure we're living in the future!