http://instructionaldesigners.ning.com/
There is an Instructional Designers Network on NING. Someone beat me to it http://instructionaldesigners.ning.com/
http://instructionaldesigners.ning.com/
It looks like someone had the idea for an instructional designers network on NING, but hasn't quite got it up and running. It was so funny to log in and see US as the only members in there, quick to follow Dierdre's link. :-) I think that happens a lot these days. I created a SCoPE space way back when just to try it out then promptly forgot about it! http://scopecommunity.ning.com/
We talked about having a special interest group for instructional designers here in SCoPE. That option is still open of course. It would be a space like this seminar discussions area, with editing access to members who need it. Also, I believe after our earlier talk about an instructional designer SIG one of our members explored some options (NING was one of them). I'll check to see if what the progress was on that. Maybe there are other spaces just waiting for us.
It's a great idea wherever we decide to gather. It's important to keep it open though -- so you don't need to log in to see what's going on.
We talked about having a special interest group for instructional designers here in SCoPE. That option is still open of course. It would be a space like this seminar discussions area, with editing access to members who need it. Also, I believe after our earlier talk about an instructional designer SIG one of our members explored some options (NING was one of them). I'll check to see if what the progress was on that. Maybe there are other spaces just waiting for us.
It's a great idea wherever we decide to gather. It's important to keep it open though -- so you don't need to log in to see what's going on.
Hi everybody:
My name is Gladys Ledwith,I live in Buenos Aires and I've been following your messages, tried to log in to the conferences (haven't been able to join live though ) and visited many of the links you all suggest, finding a lot of useful material, everything is so interesting! I also followed Dierdre's link earlier today.
All this is pretty new to me, I've been going around for some time trying to learn as much as I can making all the possible mistakes! I have even opened a ning space for the teachers I work with and a group in Ectolearning so as to share what I'm learning. I would be very thankful if you could visit and give me your feedback.
http://www.ectolearning.com/ecto2/Dashboard.aspx
Reading your messages every day has become an enjoyable habit! Thank you!
I love what Gladys said in her introductory post "Reading your messages every day has become an enjoyable habit!" 
Gladys, I checked out your NING group and it looks like it's beginning to take shape! http://teachustech.ning.com One of the most established and well designed NING communities I've come across is Classroom 2.0 http://classroom20.ning.com/. It's up for an edublog award.
I followed the ecotlearning link and it took me to my own dashboard. Did you create something there as well?
I completely get what Emma is saying about Elgg, Facebook, etc being user-centric and NING being community-centric. Maybe that's why, as Deirdre points out, "groups" in Facebook aren't as active as they are in NING. I'd say that's especially true for discussions in FB groups. Announcement type messages seem to be the most common -- wall and event posts, etc. Also, there seems to be a lot of content posting in both places -- videos, photos, links, etc. Much of this activity is what you would expect to see on a blog, but that might not get the same kind of attention.
These days I find that I rely so heavily on pull technology to keep discussions on my radar. No, wait a minute, maybe I mean push? In any case, I just don't take the extra steps to GO somewhere to keep up-to-date. I need RSS or email subscriptions. I also like to be able to link to specific items in other venues without the burden of passwords (I mean if anyone can join, why force a log in?) and mile-long URLs.
I do like the idea of a lasso approach to grouping individuals according to interests or other commonalities. Nancy White wrote an interesting piece called Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community? I think we're looking at blogs and more at this point. Individuals leave their contributions to discussions here and there, twitter here, blog there...
It seems the ideal would be a design that:
- is open
- has options to hide selected items (like draft posts, maybe membership in a group that
- provides a view on individuals' activities across groups
- alerts/tracks new items, either all, or individual topics
- has RSS for everything
- is a combination of PLE and community.
- plus all the other things I can't think of on a weekend :-)
During Jason Toal's session, Paul Stacey asked if tagging will become a part of our identities. I think he envisioned a tag cloud following him around over his Second Life avatar's head. Hmmm, maybe we need to lasso the tag clouds?
Gladys, I checked out your NING group and it looks like it's beginning to take shape! http://teachustech.ning.com One of the most established and well designed NING communities I've come across is Classroom 2.0 http://classroom20.ning.com/. It's up for an edublog award.
I followed the ecotlearning link and it took me to my own dashboard. Did you create something there as well?
I completely get what Emma is saying about Elgg, Facebook, etc being user-centric and NING being community-centric. Maybe that's why, as Deirdre points out, "groups" in Facebook aren't as active as they are in NING. I'd say that's especially true for discussions in FB groups. Announcement type messages seem to be the most common -- wall and event posts, etc. Also, there seems to be a lot of content posting in both places -- videos, photos, links, etc. Much of this activity is what you would expect to see on a blog, but that might not get the same kind of attention.
These days I find that I rely so heavily on pull technology to keep discussions on my radar. No, wait a minute, maybe I mean push? In any case, I just don't take the extra steps to GO somewhere to keep up-to-date. I need RSS or email subscriptions. I also like to be able to link to specific items in other venues without the burden of passwords (I mean if anyone can join, why force a log in?) and mile-long URLs.
I do like the idea of a lasso approach to grouping individuals according to interests or other commonalities. Nancy White wrote an interesting piece called Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community? I think we're looking at blogs and more at this point. Individuals leave their contributions to discussions here and there, twitter here, blog there...
It seems the ideal would be a design that:
- is open
- has options to hide selected items (like draft posts, maybe membership in a group that
- provides a view on individuals' activities across groups
- alerts/tracks new items, either all, or individual topics
- has RSS for everything
- is a combination of PLE and community.
- plus all the other things I can't think of on a weekend :-)
During Jason Toal's session, Paul Stacey asked if tagging will become a part of our identities. I think he envisioned a tag cloud following him around over his Second Life avatar's head. Hmmm, maybe we need to lasso the tag clouds?
Sylvia, you had so much great stuff in this post! I agree completely with you about having push technology. I also do not have time (or memory, it seems) to go and look for posts and the like. I really like email/rss feeds (to allow choice) that alert me. I tend to catch up with emails and postings in chunks, and I like systems that allow for individual flexibility.
These days I find that I rely so heavily on pull technology to keep discussions on my radar. - Sylvia
I've had two online faculty development groups in medicine fail because people didn't get email notice of new postings and they were too busy to think about logging in regularly. Our IT people are so committed to the present discussion system that they refuse to install anything else. This is also an issue with the wiki software our campus uses. Several faculty want to use it for committee work but the lack of notification of changes is frustrating.
I've had two online faculty development groups in medicine fail because people didn't get email notice of new postings and they were too busy to think about logging in regularly. Our IT people are so committed to the present discussion system that they refuse to install anything else. This is also an issue with the wiki software our campus uses. Several faculty want to use it for committee work but the lack of notification of changes is frustrating.
Silvia:
I just sent you an invitation to join the ecto space we are building. At the moment we are trying to get all the teachers in our school to join and participate. As you say, we are slowly giving it shape, the idea is to familiarize teachers with all the possibilities available. Hope you can visit the ecto page, we have a PPP and a wiki for teachers to learn how to make their own.
Thanks for your comment!
I've just had a look - it seems you can't look before you join. (I found another one called "Instructional Design", which you could look at first, but it has only two members) . For some weird reason, it's not showing up on my list of Networks. I seem to remember in the past, though, that sometimes it's taken a bit of time for a network to show up in the "Networks I'm using page". Not sure why, but i've noticed it before, so not unduly worried.
I'm not sure what I think about Ning in general, though. I tend to prefer Elgg, as while both allow you to create a community, in Elgg, you have a single blog that belongs to you. There can be a lot of granularity in who can see particular posts to your blog etc. It's also easy to create a composite blog of those posts your friends have made to their blogs, any communities you're a member of etc.
In Ning, while in some ways its good in that you can have total separation between you in communities a/b, it's much harder to get an overall of your own involvement in all communities. And you seem to have to login each time to view your communities. If you're a member of several communities & don't like to save cookies, it's a pain to have to login several times on what's essentially the same site, with the same ID.
The best way I can see to explain the differences to myself, is that Elgg (and, I think, MySpace/ Facebook) are essentially user centric, where Ning puts the focus on the community(ies) that you're a member of.
I wonder what the ideal would be?
To me, it would be something that would allow me to see all my activity at a glance (as I can in a Facebook profile), but to be able to very easily have different views of a profile in different communities. (Not sure that any SNS that I've seen really lets you do that in the way that I see it. Most seem to let you offer particular bits of information to friends only [e.g. AIM id], but none seem to let you have the different info in that same field [e.g. if you have two AIM ids - one work related & one social].
Some of the community features in Ning are nice (e.g. the sub-groups within the network), and if you could have a different profile for each community that would be good.
From an educational point of view, I'm not sure. One of the reasons that I try to encourage students to keep blogs, is that many of them find it hard to see the links between different units that they're studying. I would worry with Ning, that were we to set up communities for the different units, that would help to delineate them. With other systems, the student could have a single, central blog, and also see all the communities for the different units they're studying.
It's not just Ning that has that limitation. So does WebCT - It's also not possible for students to easily see blogs/ discussion boards for all their units in a single place, which makes integrating their subjects difficult.
Sometimes, I agree, it's nice to have the separation (though even with Ning, I see that others can see the communities I'm a member of. Not sure if I can hide things, were I to want to).
I'm not sure what I think about Ning in general, though. I tend to prefer Elgg, as while both allow you to create a community, in Elgg, you have a single blog that belongs to you. There can be a lot of granularity in who can see particular posts to your blog etc. It's also easy to create a composite blog of those posts your friends have made to their blogs, any communities you're a member of etc.
In Ning, while in some ways its good in that you can have total separation between you in communities a/b, it's much harder to get an overall of your own involvement in all communities. And you seem to have to login each time to view your communities. If you're a member of several communities & don't like to save cookies, it's a pain to have to login several times on what's essentially the same site, with the same ID.
The best way I can see to explain the differences to myself, is that Elgg (and, I think, MySpace/ Facebook) are essentially user centric, where Ning puts the focus on the community(ies) that you're a member of.
I wonder what the ideal would be?
To me, it would be something that would allow me to see all my activity at a glance (as I can in a Facebook profile), but to be able to very easily have different views of a profile in different communities. (Not sure that any SNS that I've seen really lets you do that in the way that I see it. Most seem to let you offer particular bits of information to friends only [e.g. AIM id], but none seem to let you have the different info in that same field [e.g. if you have two AIM ids - one work related & one social].
Some of the community features in Ning are nice (e.g. the sub-groups within the network), and if you could have a different profile for each community that would be good.
From an educational point of view, I'm not sure. One of the reasons that I try to encourage students to keep blogs, is that many of them find it hard to see the links between different units that they're studying. I would worry with Ning, that were we to set up communities for the different units, that would help to delineate them. With other systems, the student could have a single, central blog, and also see all the communities for the different units they're studying.
It's not just Ning that has that limitation. So does WebCT - It's also not possible for students to easily see blogs/ discussion boards for all their units in a single place, which makes integrating their subjects difficult.
Sometimes, I agree, it's nice to have the separation (though even with Ning, I see that others can see the communities I'm a member of. Not sure if I can hide things, were I to want to).
I just discovered another issue with the new SCoPE; I can't cut and paste from a previous message when I want to reply to a specific section.
I chose the design group I did because the one with a membership of two said they were for online designers and many designers work in print, online, televised, training and classroom design.
I'm not sure I totally understand the issue about different units.
In Ning , the instructor can set up discussions on specific units ahead of time. Students can write blogs on a specific topic and chose to share the blog with friends or with the entire community as an assignment. The instructor can set up assigned groups and forums (or have students volunteer); then re-form the groups for different assignments. Only members of the group can see these postings, although there is no way to stop someone joining a group, I'm not sure this would be an issue in a class. (Group, forum and discussion are different types of tools for those not familiar with Ning.)
I've never used Elgg. I like Ning for groups because it is more community-focused than Facebook. Students can upload video, pictures, music and one button shares this with friends or the community as a whole. In Facebook, I have to go to each group and add my content. I find Facebook groups have less interaction than a Ning community.
I chose the design group I did because the one with a membership of two said they were for online designers and many designers work in print, online, televised, training and classroom design.
I'm not sure I totally understand the issue about different units.
In Ning , the instructor can set up discussions on specific units ahead of time. Students can write blogs on a specific topic and chose to share the blog with friends or with the entire community as an assignment. The instructor can set up assigned groups and forums (or have students volunteer); then re-form the groups for different assignments. Only members of the group can see these postings, although there is no way to stop someone joining a group, I'm not sure this would be an issue in a class. (Group, forum and discussion are different types of tools for those not familiar with Ning.)I've never used Elgg. I like Ning for groups because it is more community-focused than Facebook. Students can upload video, pictures, music and one button shares this with friends or the community as a whole. In Facebook, I have to go to each group and add my content. I find Facebook groups have less interaction than a Ning community.
Deirdre: I just discovered another issue with the new SCoPE; I can't cut and paste from a previous message when I want to reply to a specific section. 
Sylvia: Yikes, what browser are you using?
p.s. Deirdre, the last problem you reported -- that you weren't able to upload files to SCoPE -- was because your role had changed from moderator. You had full editing access while facilitating the Active Learning seminar. But! I'm just working on turning on some of these features for everyone. Since the upgrade we have much more flexibility with assigning privileges to different roles, but getting through all these itty bitty configurations is time-consuming, and a little mind-bending!
Sylvia: Yikes, what browser are you using?
p.s. Deirdre, the last problem you reported -- that you weren't able to upload files to SCoPE -- was because your role had changed from moderator. You had full editing access while facilitating the Active Learning seminar. But! I'm just working on turning on some of these features for everyone. Since the upgrade we have much more flexibility with assigning privileges to different roles, but getting through all these itty bitty configurations is time-consuming, and a little mind-bending!
Sylvia: Yikes, what browser are you using?
I was using FireFox. I see I don't have the same problem in Explorer. It would be nice if participants could upload images as well as facilitators.
I was using FireFox. I see I don't have the same problem in Explorer. It would be nice if participants could upload images as well as facilitators.
Thanks, Deirdre. I'll check out Firefox on Windows to see if I can duplicate that copy/paste problem.
Oh, and just to clarify, anyone can upload and attach images to a forum post. It's the ability to upload and insert an image in the body of a message that goes along with facilitator access. I'll see what I can set up.
Oh, and just to clarify, anyone can upload and attach images to a forum post. It's the ability to upload and insert an image in the body of a message that goes along with facilitator access. I'll see what I can set up.
From Re: Instructional Designers Network by scurrie on Sunday 02 December 2007 20:53:00:
Thanks, Deirdre. I'll check out Firefox on Windows to see if I can duplicate that copy/paste problem.
I've just done the above copy/paste with Flock (which is Firefox based). Is that what you meant you couldn't do? I know that I've never (either this version of Scope) or the older one, been able to do that when I'm in this screen (i.e. with the message above & me writing my comments), but I've been able to do it from the view when you can see all the messages. I guess that's because you might want to quote from "Fred" while replying to "jane". However, it does mean that if you hit "reply" to Fred's message & then want to quote him, with the appropriate citation at the top (so as to make it clear for those who read messages sorted by date, rather than threaded), you have to go back to the previous screen.
It would be really nice if you could get the citation when you copy from the message list, or in the reply mode.
From memory, to activate it in the first place, you have to click ctrl+s, or something. Can't quite remember now
Thanks, Deirdre. I'll check out Firefox on Windows to see if I can duplicate that copy/paste problem.
I've just done the above copy/paste with Flock (which is Firefox based). Is that what you meant you couldn't do? I know that I've never (either this version of Scope) or the older one, been able to do that when I'm in this screen (i.e. with the message above & me writing my comments), but I've been able to do it from the view when you can see all the messages. I guess that's because you might want to quote from "Fred" while replying to "jane". However, it does mean that if you hit "reply" to Fred's message & then want to quote him, with the appropriate citation at the top (so as to make it clear for those who read messages sorted by date, rather than threaded), you have to go back to the previous screen.
It would be really nice if you could get the citation when you copy from the message list, or in the reply mode.
From memory, to activate it in the first place, you have to click ctrl+s, or something. Can't quite remember now
Just downloaded Flock. Thanks for the reminder, Emma! I think I checked it out awhile back then went off on a tangent and forgot all about it. It's that radar/memory thing again!
To activate smart copy open up a discussion thread (i.e. not in reply mode) then hit shift-ctrl-s This brings the context info with the clipping. The annotation tool doesn't work in reply mode either. I think it all has something to do with having to highlight text or copy from a static web page. I'm not 100% sure -- I may be confusing this why it doesn't work in wikis. (Okay, bad memory AND confused. Diagnosis anyone?
)
I usually pop up the discussion I'm reading in a new tab or window while composing. That also helps me to get the full context instead of just the one message that appears when I click reply.
To activate smart copy open up a discussion thread (i.e. not in reply mode) then hit shift-ctrl-s This brings the context info with the clipping. The annotation tool doesn't work in reply mode either. I think it all has something to do with having to highlight text or copy from a static web page. I'm not 100% sure -- I may be confusing this why it doesn't work in wikis. (Okay, bad memory AND confused. Diagnosis anyone?
)I usually pop up the discussion I'm reading in a new tab or window while composing. That also helps me to get the full context instead of just the one message that appears when I click reply.
From Re: Instructional Designers Network by scurrie on Monday 03 December 2007 08:18:00:
To activate smart copy open up a discussion thread (i.e. not in reply mode) then hit shift-ctrl-s
Sylvia
This is very weird. As I said, I'm using Flock - which is Firefox based. When I wrote the previous message, I quoted you and in this reply window it said "From Re: blah blah blah and then the message.
I've just noticed now that the message I wrote has the quote from you (the message that I sent as 12.28 & starts out Thanks, Deirdre - which is what you'd already say). Anyway, it's got the quote, but not the fact that you said it.
I hit "reply" to say that I thought I'd seen the information before I wrote it.
When I'd hit reply & got to see my message, there was the "From blah, blah".
I went back to the discussion view, and the from blah blah had gone.
I'm now replying to this one. Right at the top, it's saying "From...". I've a sneaking suspicion that when I post it, suddenly the "from" will disappear.
Weird.
P.S. It has.
To activate smart copy open up a discussion thread (i.e. not in reply mode) then hit shift-ctrl-s
Sylvia
This is very weird. As I said, I'm using Flock - which is Firefox based. When I wrote the previous message, I quoted you and in this reply window it said "From Re: blah blah blah and then the message.
I've just noticed now that the message I wrote has the quote from you (the message that I sent as 12.28 & starts out Thanks, Deirdre - which is what you'd already say). Anyway, it's got the quote, but not the fact that you said it.
I hit "reply" to say that I thought I'd seen the information before I wrote it.
When I'd hit reply & got to see my message, there was the "From blah, blah".
I went back to the discussion view, and the from blah blah had gone.
I'm now replying to this one. Right at the top, it's saying "From...". I've a sneaking suspicion that when I post it, suddenly the "from" will disappear.
Weird.
P.S. It has.
(Edited by Sylvia Currie - original submission Monday, 3 December 2007, 09:57 AM)
p.s. Emma, thanks so much for finding this little weird thing! I've reported it to the SFU tech folks and the solution will probably be quite clear to them. Cheers! Sylvia
Images:
Just testing ... that's the usage data for Orkut - yet another SNS. I've got it in Flickr, and I'm using Flock as my browser, so I just had to drag it in here & it automatically embeds a thumbnail, which is a link to a fuller sized image.
(Getting images into Flickr with Flock's pretty easy too, it's just a case of browsing, selecting [multiple] and then uploading)
Emma
Just testing ... that's the usage data for Orkut - yet another SNS. I've got it in Flickr, and I'm using Flock as my browser, so I just had to drag it in here & it automatically embeds a thumbnail, which is a link to a fuller sized image.
(Getting images into Flickr with Flock's pretty easy too, it's just a case of browsing, selecting [multiple] and then uploading)
Emma