David Deubelbeiss guest authored my column this week at my request. He runs a very large and successful ning site, EFL Classroom 2.0 - I feel that ning is a great resource for teachers but I didn’t have the time to explore it and write about it properly so I was pleased when David agreed to write the column. You can read it here, in the extended entry, or at the Korea Herald.

Korea Herald Readers
Welcome. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this weeks column. If you would like to learn more about me visit my bio page. I have also been blogging at this site for 4 years so there are a lot of entries if you care to look through the archives. Some of my favorite or more popular entries are available on the classic entries page.

Marshall McLuhan media guru once stated: “There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” This is true about how education will work in the future. Classrooms will be student-centered, and learning will not be teacher-dependent. The classroom will be anytime, everywhere. Learning will happen through sharing, interaction and “connectivity” between peers.

Ning helps make this future happen. Ning is a free social networking service that allows teachers (or anybody else) to create their own social network. Perhaps you’ve heard of Facebook - America’s version of Cyworld. Well, with Ning, you can have your own service - not just a simple page.

Ning’s founder and CEO Gina Bianchini explains: “What’s different about Ning from other services is that we give you your own video site like YouTube, or social-networking site like MySpace. But, unlike being a page in somebody else’s service, it’s yours. You get to choose what it’s about.”

Teachers can create their own social network for their classroom, school or organization using Ning. Also, there is no need to be a tech-savvy geek. No need to know code, javascript or all that technical jargon. Ning makes it easy. You can create your own learning network in just minutes and have your students connecting and learning through discussion and sharing.

How does it work? First, you need to sign up at Ning.com; it takes just seconds. Give your network a name and you’re off. You will get your own unique address - for example - myclass.ning.com. As a Ning network creator, you now can set up your network, invite others to join, personalize the look (color and layout), and add cool features in a click - like music and, video players, extra pages, forums, photo albums, blogs and all sorts of other cool widgets. Members can form their own groups within your network so they can even have networks within networks.

One really cool feature is that you can customize the language using their language editor. Don’t like the word “discuss?” You can change it in an instant to “chat about.” With the language editor, you can even put your Ning network into multiple languages. You’ll get lots of help in making and customizing your network by joining Ning Network Creators (networkcreators.ning.com).

Online safety is always a concern among educators. Ning offers network creators three levels of network privacy (and also many levels of privacy for individual members).

1. Totally public - This is the default setting, and anyone can see everything without joining.
2. Semi-public - Anyone can see the main page, but to interact and view any further content, you must join.
3. Private - Students must join before they can see or interact on the network.

There are many levels of moderation, so the network teacher always has complete control over the network’s content and discussions.

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Ning does come with Google ads, but grade 7-12 educators can have an ad-free network. Find out how to do this and get more information on regarding how to use Ning for educational purposes at education.ning.com. Within Ning, there are many great educational sites for teachers to learn about the growing Web 2.0 role in education.

Classroom 2.0 (classroom20.ning.com) is a great place to start. There are thousands of teachers discussing all aspects of teaching, and they share ideas, lessons and resources. EFL Classroom 2.0 (eflclassroom.ning.com) offers a similar network for English teachers. There are many more networks (Ning now has over 400,000 unique networks) on all kinds of subjects - librarians, technology, theory, young learners, university classes and games. The list is virtually endless. Use the powerful Ning network search engine to find what interests you.

Students love chatting and discussing, and this is a great way to foster language learning. We learn by doing, and a Ning network provides many ways to practice. You can practice by having discussions or just chatting. Further, by providing students with Ning, you can help them develop the most important skill of being a self-motivated learner. For example, I use Voicethread (Voicethread.com) a lot with my own students (Voicethread is a site where students can speak using a microphone), and simply embed the voicethread on my site so students can use it in class. You can do the same with videos or presentations. Embeding content is just one example of using Ning to give students learning opportunities outside the traditional classroom.

The basic appeal of Ning for teachers is that it is a quick and easy way to get your students discussing course content and learning in a community. Its flexibility and customization is what makes Ning special. The teacher has so many options, and so does each member or student. If you do have some tech skills, you can acquire your html code and build your own unique site using the Ning application.

So, get Ninging today! There is a world of learning that awaits both you and your students. The classroom is no longer limited to a space between four walls; it is the connected world. We are all crew and creators of our own learning on this spaceship Earth.

David Deubelbeiss teaches and trains Korean and foreign English teachers at the Seoul Education Training Institute and can be contacted on EFL Classroom 2.0 (eflclassroom.ning.com). - Ed.