Age Restrictions and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

Although I am still very enthusiastic about Ning, it is not something that can be used by students younger than 13. This is because in order to use it, students must have their own Ning accounts, and the folks who run Ning do not want to risk violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) which is intended to protect children under 13 from disclosing certain kinds of personal information without verifiable parental consent. Frankly, although I have always been very careful to teach my students about protecting their privacy and I was aware of COPPA, it hadn't occurred to me that it would create a problem in this situation because I have never used this sort of online account with my students. I suppose I could go back to the people who are in charge of Ning accounts and find out what they would need in the way of parental consent to allow my younger students to use Ning if I can't find a more appropriate alternative (which I think I can).

Ning--Growing on me!

As I work on the tutorial for Ning, I am really very impressed with it. Uploading photos and movies is VERY easy. I think it might almost be more useful for what I have in mind for my 6th grade classes than pbwiki. I have a fairly specific set of purposes and I don't really have a lot of HW assignments as I would for a different type of class.

Ning

Ning allows you to set up your own social networking site, with a blog, comments, etc. We have set one up called ParkTechFACA2008. You can make the network private (invisible to others, and by invitation only). You can post photos and videos, create discussion groups and have blogs (each individual member has one). The administrator can preview and approve videos and photos before they are posted. This could be a good tool for a class to have discussions and share work.

The photo feature is very easy to use; it opens a window WITHIN THE NING PAGE that shows your computer's files on the left and you just drag and drop them into the upload area on the right. You can drag and drop multiple photos at once. You can tag photos as a group and individually before completing the upload. You can then create albums and filter them according to the tags.

First!

So, now we've checked out Blogger, Tumblr, Ning, and Diigo as possible ways of collaborating. It seems that Ning is a little too separated--it'd be good to have all our ideas for this FACA in one place. Diigo is better for links--not as good for commentary. Tumblr I'm still figuring out.