Educational Networking with Ning
by Jacqueline Beaupré
In the BeginNing
As education innovators and technology
enthusiasts, we must keep up with new Web
2.0 resources and identify which can be
effectively integrated into the classroom.
How can we safely harness technology to
help students become educated, innovative,
and engaged members of their world?
With the advent of MySpace and Facebook,
social networks have blossomed into widely
accepted global communities for sharing
information. Educators have begun to use
them for developing professional learning
networks, but their application in the
classroom is still highly debated. As a
secure, free, group-based, and highly
customizable portal for networking, Ning
addresses many concerns in the academic
community and promises to have
extraordinary applications in the secondary
school classroom.
EDUC-E102: Introduction to Educational Technologies. Harvard University Extension School. November 21, 2009.
RunNing Circles
around the Competitors
Ning (found at www.ning.com) is beginning
to dominate the educational networking
niche by focusing on the group, committing
to respect the budgetary and privacy
concerns of the educational community, and
affording generous but facile creative control.
Network Focus. MySpace and Facebook
were not originally designed for
collaboration. As their names imply, they
merely serve as profile-based user
directories. It is unsurprising that students,
yearning for the easiest and trendiest modes
of self-expression, rapidly adopt such
individualistic and interconnected, yet
simultaneously anonymous, registries.
Facebook's introduction of groups and a
variety of add-on applications is helping it
develop some collaborative potential, but the
individual's profile persists as the hub of
action. This focus hardly aligns with the
classroom, an environment that thrives on
communication in a community
atmosphere. Ning hosts communities rather
than MySpace or Facebook-esque
individuals. This is evident from the
homepage, where visitors are prompted to
start their own network or join a featured
one, not to immediately create an individual
profile. Members naturally begin to define
themselves by associating with like-minded
groups and contributing individual
perspectives within the parameters set by
those chosen networks. In this way, Ning
essentially mirrors the structure of a real-
world classroom and forces students to
express themselves within the frameworks
of their virtual environment.
Free of Fees. Use of the Ning community is
“free” to everyone courtesy of cost-defraying
targeted Google advertisements. To remove
these unprofessional distractions, average
users must subscribe and pay a monthly fee
of $24.95. Educators, however, can submit a
special request to have advertisements
removed from their class sites for free. This
ad-free option at no cost is a clear advantage
that Ning has over other powerhouse social
networks. For example, Wikispaces and
Edublogs require a membership fee to
eliminate advertisements on their
educational websites. MySpace and
Facebook do not even have ad-free options
for educators.
Privacy Capabilities. All Ning members
have a link to report inappropriate content
on every page and network creators can
empower some members with
administrative control to help ensure their
network is clean. In addition, recent changes
to Ning have drastically enhance privacy and
limited illegitimate usage. These
improvements have increased security in the
classroom and showcase the Ning
administrators' desires to improve the
EDUC-E102: Introduction to Educational Technologies. Harvard University Extension School. November 21, 2009.
quality of their website based on usage data.
One of the most significant changes prevents
members from being able to generally search
for networks of interest. Based on hints in
the Ning administrators' blog, they might
include a search feature that suggests
networks based on one's interests as a
substitute. Network creators already had
significant control over privacy settings by
being able to determine their websites' levels
of public visibility, so these changes make it
nearly impossible to stumble into a network.
Creators can set up their network so that
members must be approved before they can
see content on their network, search
members, and contribute to the community's
body of work. If any usage violations occur,
creators also have disciplinary powers; they
can delete contributions or even entire
members from the network, known as
“banning” those individuals. Recently Ning
started a “suspending” option that, unlike
banning, allows the network creator to keep
the suspect individual's work on the site and
just strip them of access. Suspended
individuals can also be reapproved later.
This change could be really useful for
educators. Rather than having to
permanently deleting a student's work when
banned, they can give them a virtual “time
out” and just temporarily suspend them until
the violations are addressed. It could also be
used to delete course graduates without
deleting their contributions.
The high level of control available to Ning
network creators supports most school
systems' Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
mandates and has become a standard for
class websites. Similar options appear on
other popular education networks, such as
the Elgg and the Edublogs. It is an advantage
over Facebook, where groups may be
“invisible” to the public and administration
privileges in them controlled to some degree
by the group's creator, but where regulation
cannot reach individuals' profiles. The
students' profiles cannot be protected or
eliminated even though they may be
associated with the school. It should be
noted that individual profile problems are
less likely to occur on Ning because users
have subprofiles for each network they join
in addition to their main profile page.
Students (and educators) can therefore have
a school-approved profile following AUPs
for their educational network and a more
relaxed ones for social networks.
Simplified Creative Control. Ning networks
are simple to build, yet extremely versatile
in appearance and structure. Creators are
given a basic scaffold to work from and
guided through the process of
customization. Everything from the
background art and network language to the
features available to members is at the
discretion of the administrators. In addition,
a “Manage” tab on every network allows
administrators to alter their website at any
moment. The standard website features
provided by Ning, added WordPress
dashboard style, include network sub-
groups, forums, blogs, pictures, videos,
calendars, RSS feeds, recent activity
updates, etc. The plasticity afforded by Ning
is especially useful for educators who want
to adjust based on the needs of the day and
not be tied to permanent or inflexible social
networks like Facebook. For example,
Google Chat and the Facebook chat feature
are often too tempting for students,
especially those whose school has an
extended day and who want to chat with
friends from other school systems. The chat
feature on Ning networks, in addition to
only being available to network members,
can be selectively activated, such as on the
night before a final exam to field any last-
minute questions.
EDUC-E102: Introduction to Educational Technologies. Harvard University Extension School. November 21, 2009.
WinNing Features
for Classroom Networks
Discussion Forums. The main forum serves
as the family dinner table of network
discussions. They can be brief solicitations
for help or lengthy blog-style posts sparking
conversation. The comments can be
threaded (indented, also known as “nesting,”
directly after the original discussion post)
and tagged by subject. While individual
members can have their own pages and
traditional blogs, comments cannot be
threaded or tagged. Thus, discussion forums
likely encourage a more engaging and
dynamic classroom blogging experience.
Obviously, creating a location to discuss
topics and reflect upon ideas is not enough;
educators must work with students to set up
an environment with clear goals and
expectations for blogging. Doing so will not
only help students become more creative
writers, but will also coach them in proper
netiquette. Students must be encouraged to
engage in meaningful discourse on an
educational network as opposed to just
lurking, a common default role on the social
networks with which they are more familiar.
Well-defined and accepted rules about the
frequency and content of network
contributions foster a productive
community. Given the ubiquity of digital
networking beyond the classroom, learning
safe and courteous communication over the
internet could be viewed as a life skill.
Groups. Within their Ning networks,
administrators can create subgroups. These
factions have their own lists of members,
links, and discussion forums. While the main
forum may be sufficient for small classes, the
groups feature allows educators teaching
more than one section to create separate
areas for each class. Doing so would
maintain the close community experienced
in the classroom without sacrificing potential
opportunities for collaboration among
sections. Differentiation can be difficult to
address in large classrooms, but Ning
groups allow educators to simultaneously
target the needs of subsets of students
within the class. Gifted students could be
challenged with more demanding
discussions. Groups could also be used to
coordinate Since group forum content can
be made only viewable to members, it could
also serve as a place for parent-student-
teacher communication.
Multimedia. A staple of social networking is
the sharing of popular media. Educators can
use their Ning network to share relevant
music, videos, pictures, or even textbook
figures. Alternatively, students could
incorporate media into projects and post
them to the network. For example, students
working on that dreaded SAT vocabulary
could post their cognitively rich Brainyflix
flashcards to their Language Arts classroom
Ning network for the whole class to enjoy
and learn from (and save expensive color
printing cost, too). Students creating class
video projects in a foreign language or
documenting a science laboratory could post
their videos on the network. Transparency
and peer evaluation can be used to engender
enthusiasm for higher quality work or
interest in the community itself. If parents
or school administrators are network
members, then they would also get a
snapshot of classroom events.
Events. At face value, the standard calendar
feature is perfect for publicizing class
deadlines. If modifiable by members, then it
would also be useful for coordinating project
or study groups outside of class. Going
beyond the classroom, it could serve as a
tool to introduce events related to the
network's interests. For example, the class
could be reading passages from Howard
Zinn's A People's History of the United
States, and would be interested to know that
he has an upcoming public speaking
engagement at Boston University—a thirty
EDUC-E102: Introduction to Educational Technologies. Harvard University Extension School. November 21, 2009.
minute ride from the school. Educators can
pique student and parent engagement, even
going so far as to embed a Google map. The
idea that learning does not stop outside the
classroom can begin within it.
RSS Feeds. Educators can use an RSS feed
on their network page to subtly import
related, but otherwise missed, external
perspectives. In an age of information
overload, learning how to easily access news
and opinions by having them delivered to
you is a useful skill for students.
Analytics. Ning, like many educational
networking sites before it, is completely
ready for Google analytics implementation.
Using Google analytics to track web traffic is
a subtle but infinitely useful feature because
it gives the network creator mountains of
usage data with which he or she can improve
the classroom community as well as
maximize the network's effectiveness. If you
discover that no students viewed the study
guides posted on your network, then you will
know to check the links and remind the class
to use them. If you see that students spend
the least amount of time on the forum and
the most on their network profile, then you
can redirect their attention. You could even
see how frequently project groups use their
Ning group page to collaborate in order to
see if the feature is worth continuing.
Applications. Ning apps, widgets that
network creators can add to their website to
enhance functionality, are possibly the
networking site's most promising feature.
Want members to share Google docs? Spend
down-time answering review questions? Be
intrigued by a Twitter tracker? The number
of Facebook and iPhone apps increase
exponentially, so it is only a matter of time
before there are Ning apps for virtually
anything. Tech-savvy users are already
creating apps, such as text translators, to fit
their individual needs and sharing them with
the Ning community.
RemaiNing Concerns
Age Restrictions. Like many websites, users
must at least thirteen years old. This limits
classroom usage to grade 7 and higher.
Potential for Student Misuse. All online
networks risk misuse. If not properly
supervised, students could endanger or
embarrass themselves and others by failing
to self-monitor. Cyber-bullying and the
posting of inappropriate pictures seem to be
the most common threats. Just as in the real
world, discussing the expectations for
conduct and utilizing good classroom
management will discourage violations of
the school's AUP. Learning about safe
internet usage in less exposed networks can
help students prepare for more public ones.
Networks for LearNing
Educators are slow to trust user-driven
platforms given the potential for misuse. As
a society we defend freedom of expression,
but rightly fear such power in the hands of
naïve students. The most popular social
networks to date either ignore this concern
or charge a fee to address it. In contrast,
Ning ameliorates the concern by allowing
educators to easily create versatile websites
that can encourage students to grow as
individuals in a collaborative and closely
monitored community. The Ning
administrators have demonstrated an
ongoing commitment to improving the Ning
experience for educators and students, as
evidenced by frequent updates and the
creation of a “Ning in Education” network.
In addition to its outstanding features, this
active support for educators indicates that
Ning will become a critical resource for web-
based classroom networking.
EDUC-E102: Introduction to Educational Technologies. Harvard University Extension School. November 21, 2009.
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http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=826
Admin. (2009). Features: Edublogs: Teacher and
Student Blogs. Retrieved from
http://edublogs.org/features/
Admin. (2009, August 31). How to Request Ad
Removal from an Educational Network. Retrieved
from http://education.ning.com/page/page/show?
id=1027485:Page:45750
Admin. Ning Blog. (2009, November 21). Retrieved
from http://blog.ning.com/
Admin. (2009, November 21). Ning in Education.
Retrieved from http://education.ning.com/
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http://www.wikispaces.com/site/privatelabel/k-12
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pic:2301
Nash, S. (2009, November 21). Principles of biology:
bringing life and living things into focus. Retrieved
from http://mwsu-bio101.ning.com/
Susan. (2009, November 21). Translated: Gadgets,
Widgets, and Whatever to Add Translation
Functions to your Ning. Retrieved from
http://translated.ning.com/