Grou.ps, will you accept this rose?
It’s really hard to think about leaving my beloved Nings. Especially since they are so comfortable. But really I have to be realistic here. I can’t afford Ning Plus at $24.99 a month and even if Pearson finally agrees to sponsor my Nings (apparently they’re experiencing a high number of requests. Duh.), I will no longer have access to chat or groups. Also I’d have to moderate every blog post before they appear, and while some teachers may want that, I don’t.
Grou.ps is not quite as slick and the kids can’t personalize their profile pages to the same extent that they could on Ning but it’s still pretty good. I’ve had a couple problems migrating my data but they’ve been very quick to respond and very helpful
But I have a confession….
And now we go to commercial.
Just kidding!
Here’s my confession: I will be cheating on Grou.ps with Ning. Truth be told, as exciting as the new guy is, there’s something warm and fuzzy and comfortable about Ning. As Royan so aptly pointed out it’s like I broke up with the perfect boyfriend and now I keep comparing each new guy to him.
Seriously, though, I would like to stay with Ning only because all my stuff’s already there and yes I know I can migrate to Grou.ps, but I already know how to use Ning and I can speak about it with a fair degree of confidence. The problem of course is that while I applied to have all my Nings sponsored by Pearson, I’ve only heard back about one. Ning says that they’re dealing with a high number of requests so I have to be patient. I’ll bet. They say:
If you already submitted a question or issue but haven’t received a response yet, please be patient. We are working as fast as we can to get to your ticket. Submitting the same question multiple times will slow our team down. If your question is related to a sponsorship or billing, please rest assured that we won’t shut down any networks after the August 20 deadline until we’ve responded to your tickets.
Okay. So I will use Grou.ps for my media class and continue using my Nings for my grade 12 English classes. It isn’t absolutely essential to have chat for my two other classes and it also isn’t absolutely essential that they create subgroups for their book clubs since I want them to look at all the blogs, not just the ones on their books. I’ll just be a little more strict about use of tags. If for some reason Pearson won’t sponsor them I’ll just move over to Grou.ps.
So that’s the plan. Two roses. You’ll never see that on The Bachelorette.
As a side note, @markhowe1982 told be about Schoology which I checked out. I think it would be absolutely ideal for teachers who are not techies and have no desire to spend hours geeking out with a new toy. Schoology was super simple to set up. It doesn’t have a bunch of bells and whistles but it’s got blogs, groups, and you can also post assignments and grades (among a few other things). In some ways it reminds me of Edmodo, but Edmodo doesn’t have a blog feature.
By the way, as of this morning Ning came through and all my Nings are Pearson sponsored.
Dear visitor from Palo Alto California, Thank YOU!
Hi, I really like your analogy with dating, ex-boyfriends, and rose ceremonies when it comes to moving away from Ning. I feel the same.
The changes in Ning have been a real nuisance and very frustrating. Especially for me, since I’m outside North America (ie. no Pearson sponsoring my Nings), and my international school networks have almost 300 members. I migrated some of my old ones to grouply as it was so easy, just as a place to store them for future reference perhaps. Interestingly, though, I could still access the old Nings today, but maybe it’s because it’s the weekend. However, with my current active international Ning, I decided to invest in one more year with Ning. Possibly my school will pay for it. I’ll have to check out Grou.ps although I think I, and the students especially, would miss the customizable profile pages. So annoying!
Thank you for all the info about this I found in your blog!
Thanks for your comment. I didn’t realize Pearson didn’t sponsor Nings from outside North America. That’s really too bad. The one thing I would caution you about regarding Grou.ply (if using it with students) is that when they form a Group.ly profile, that profile is searchable by other Grou.ply members. A spokesperson told me they could customize how much of that was visible in a search but I even found it tricky to customize and even then it looked like there was more information visible than I would like. Grou.ps told me that they would be changing their ads so they were text only and last time I checked, they are. Much less obtrusive.