What is a Ning??
A Ning is a website that allows you to create and control your own online social network. It is a similar concept to Facebook or MySpace except you can control who the members are, the content and the topic of the network.

So what use would this be in education?
For the students
Excellent to create a controlled collaborative environment for a class, year level or a group of students from different year levels that need to work together or even students from other schools. It would also be useful for a specific project that you might be working on for a set period of time.
For you as a teacher
Thgere are many educational Nings on different topics which you can join to share resources and ideas with educators from around the globe. Not to mention that it might be a safer environment than jumping straight into something like Facebook if you are worried about it.

Features of a Ning
A Ning has blogs, discussion boards Note, photo storage, event promotion, the ability to create groups, the ability to change the theme and the layout of the Ning

To create your own Ning click here

Some examples of Nings

ICT Development Network Ning

Classroom 2.0

Ning in Education

T-Bird Times

So I thought this blog would come in handy! Thought i would share my preliminary thoughts on the Professional Learning Goals Program that I am planning for next year. The assumption that I am making is that we expect our students to create learning goals and measure whether they have met them or not to help them become life long learners so why not teachers?? My scope is the development of teachers in ICT integration and use but I am hoping that is could be used for all areas of a teachers growth. So the plan thus far is by using a Ning staff will join a learning community within the school and post answers to a series of questions via a blog either on the ning or RSS’d (what is the past tense of RSS?)  to their ning page on the goals that they would like to set for themselves.I will then meet with each staff member to help develop a plan of action to help them achieve their goals, which will include after school training sessions, external PD’s, readings, peer reviews, mentoring and joining a professional learning network. Staff will then need to blog their progress and reflections at least 4 times over the year (obviously they can do more but that will be the minimum) and to utilise the features of the ning to collect evidence of their achievements e.g uploading photos, videos, documents, commenting on other’s pages etc. (It is also a sneaky way to get staff to use some web 2.0 technology and hopefully begin some collaboration and conversations!) I will also meet with staff over the year to chat with them about their progress. Staff will be encouraged to set goals that are meaningful and relevant to their teaching and needs.

So I am hoping this will work and these are just my initial thoughts. I need to work out what will happen if staff don’t work on their goals at all. I need to work out what the questions will be. Anybody see any other glitches, flaws, suggestions needed???