flynn089

Social networking is one of the key concepts that is driving Web 2.0 these days. With the opportunities social networks offer for collaboration and communication, this is certainly something we as educators should be thinking about being involved in. In this tutorial I'd like to show you how to create your own social network on Ning, just by following 7 steps. I've published these as a downloadable PDF with screen shots, so that you can print them up and follow them / share them. 7 steps to creating a social network>> (944k pdf) Perhaps though, more importantly it's worth thinking about some of the issues, and pros and cons surrounding the use of social networks. Some advantages of creating your own network. Control over the content You can make sure nobody posts anything inappropriate or irrelevant. Control of who joins and the ability to block or ban people You can protect your members, ban anyone who doesn't behave or just limit membership to people you want t...

Well apologies to any regular visitors who have noticed the lack of activity her over the last week. This is mainly because my time over the next couple of weeks is being consumed by one of the biggest meetings of English language teachers in the World. The IATEFL annual conference. I've been working as part of the online editorial team for the event and there are now some very active, discussion forums going on a whole range of ELT related subjects. Over the next week, the face to face event will begin and when it does we hope to be broadcasting and archiving a whole range of the live events including video and audio of interviews, plenaries and workshops. So if you don't have the time and money to get along to Exeter UK from now until 11th April, then come along and sign on for the free online conference and get the opportunity to share experiences with teachers from all over the world. Come and join us at: http://exeteronline.britishcouncil.org/ And if anyone is going alon...

With the growth in interest in mobile and handheld learning, I thought I’d investigate one of the many new Web 2.0 type start ups that are offering free (at the moment at least) services for setting up websites and web based communities to be accessed on mobile phones and other mobile devices. The one I’ve started with is a service called Winksite . On the home page of their website the company claims that, “Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile websites and communities that can be viewed worldwide on any phone.” So I thought I would try to set up my own site as an extension of this blog. What’s good about it I was actually quite impressed at just how easy it is and at the number of features on offer. Once you have registered, Winksite offers users the opportunity to set up as many as 5 websites for mobile devices. Each site can have a range of features that you can select and edit from a fairly easy to use web based interface. Some of the possible features for your mobile website i...

The Nicenet Classroom Assistant is a really useful tool which enables teachers to very quickly and simply create their own virtual learning environment. I’ve been using this with various classes and groups of teachers for the last 7 or 8 years and it has remained reliable, stable, safe and free. Features The VLE it creates has a number of useful features. A messaging function which allows registered users to send personal or group messages to others registered on the VLE (this can be configured to forward messages on to email addresses if the user so chooses) A conferencing function. This acts like a bulletin board where threaded discussions can be created around tasks or topics. A link sharing resources where the tutor and / or users can post and share and annotate links to external sites. This can help to focus your students’ use of web resources. Document publishing . This can be used by either tutor, to publish course materials, or students to publish their work. The tutor has ...