It's a NING thing!!

At the weekend, I came across my new favourite online thing, and it's called NING.
This is a tool for creating social networks.
This means that you can create an online space where you can meet with people who you either choose to have as members or you can exclude those you don't.

I created a NING at the weekend called GEOPOLIS: geographical metropolis: a virtual world where geographers can exchange information, or form groups to discuss issues. I already have some online colleagues who have joined up.


This is just a trial at the moment, so that I can explore the features, but it seems to me that it has great potential. Just uploaded a few images very easily in a FLICKR like way, with the ability to add TAGS (will come back to these later) and also add the geolocation of the image on a nice Google Map, and also create a mini SLIDESHOW of the images as well.
Teachers can now share their materials with their students in lots of new ways.
They don't necessarily need a website to do this.
For example, here's an image uploaded by Dan Raven Ellison, which also has details of the next phase in publicising geography: at the Live Earth gig in London later this year.

Sharing of materials can be done very easily via:

SCRIBD : allows sharing of word documents and embedding

SLIDESHARE : allows sharing of powerpoint presentations and embedding

YOU TUBE : allows sharing of videos and embedding

My new plan is to explore setting up a NING for a group of students, and giving them all the rights of access, and then encouraging them to share materials that they (and I) have created and see where it takes us.

And last week I was invited to be one of the speakers at an AS/A2 revision conference being put on by the Royal Geographical Society in October 2007. Last year, over 340 students attended, which is a bit daunting ! I've been asked to do 35 minutes on IT as study support, and will be mentioning blogs, podcasts and vodcasts etc. and the NINGS !

So watch this space for further developments.
And see some of you in October !

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