Travelling with ning

Must post a blog entry, must post a blog entry ...

After a whirlwind trip to Japan with 17 of our school's finest and then the Christmas / New Year period, I've finally managed to get back to what I started out here.

Prior to leaving for Japan, I set up a ning network for parents and the school to use to track us on our adventures. All seemed to find this useful; though in hindsight, I needed to explain how to access it a little more effectively. I set it up as a private network - by invitation - and some parents were confused by the invitation in their email inbox. Anyway, it was a simple way to post pictures, videos and blog entries on what we had done and where we had been. Really simple. We did not have a laptop with us but the hotels we were staying in all had computers, albeit a little slow, we could use. Feedback on the ning has all been positive and if you are going on a similar expedition, I would recommend setting up your own little network. Ning's can be set up as a private or a public network. The best one to check out is Classroom 2.0. If you're a teacher, I highly recommend it as a place to network and learn. Professional development at its best.

There are, of course, many other features we could have used but didn't, for no particular reason. Next time, I would set it up a little earlier and use the forum to answer questions (that came via email or phone). I'm sure there are plenty of other things that can be done. The next plan is to set up a ning for the language classroom ...