Questions for me to ponder

Great questions from Ann for me to ponder

You've made a great start with your Ning environment. Your navigation (at the top) is clear and makes sense in relation to your course. Are these standard with Ning or have you customised? I would like to see some of your lovely photos at the top of the welcome page. Is it easy to move the panes around? There is some duplication - i.e. some of the navigation at the top relates to some of the panes on the Welcome page e.g. Forum, Assignments, etc. What level of control do you have over what appears where?So, how do you plan to use these space with your students? I can see that you have been developing the blog for a few weeks now. When will you introduce the blog to your students? Is it a resource for them? Can you track whether they have used it? Can you describe how it fits into your course please? Do you think it will ever stand alone or will it always be part of a f2f course?Ann

Answer from me!

Most of the navigation is the standard tabs in ning however I've added some customised tabs as well. You can move the panes in a similiar fashion to how you can customise your blogger blog. You can also feature tabs on your front/home page eg. your notes for the week or assignment tabs etc. I plan to use this in combination with my blog. I can also feature my blog within the front page of my ning network. I introduce students to my blog right at the beginning of the course because of all the resources that are listed in it. Its hard to see if students have used it. I can check for visitors using googles analytics but its hard to see if they are my students. I can also track how many times my notes have been downloaded. On the other hand its really easy to track who has visited the ning network.I plan to use the blog as a resources for all my photography courses but i also want it to stand alone as a blog for other photography enthusiast. I've added it to the photo blogs registry site.The ning network is solely for the students in my digital photography course. I'll keep this as a close network so only users I approve can log on and view all the pages. I've also set up another ning network for a digital scrapbooking course I'm running at school for teachers. I have about 12 teachers in the network with resources and class notes for them to use. There are also videos and tutorial for them to use and several discussion forums that they are beginning to use with lots of encouragement from me. I find its really working well as an additional resources to faciliate their own learning away from the classroom, I'm encouraging them to upload their finished work on their page for others to view. Its a closed network (private) but you can view the front page here.