Teen Connection Ning Site

Teen Connection:

A Library Social Networking Proposal

Eric Beckrest, Erin Berman, Khaleedah Thomas

San Jose State University

The name of the technology you would like to implement

Ning

A brief description of this technology

Ning is a platform which allows you to create your own social networks. The site can incorporate many different features including forums, blogs, video and photo uploads, chat, and more. Libraries can even link to outside sources such as blogs, catalogs, or other resources outside of the Ning platform. Ning also provides many of the same features as other social networking sites such as Facebook. Members are able to create their own page with status updates, comment on other member’s additions, share links, and IM/chat with other members.

There are three levels of subscription plans which include: Ning Mini (for small groups priced at $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year), Ning Plus (offers more customizable features and flexibilities over controls at $19.95 per month or $199.95 per year), and Ning Pro (includes premium add-ons and more bandwidth storage at $49.95 per month or $499.95 per year). Features vary depending on the type of plan purchased. Our prototype, Teen Connection, was created using Ning Mini, which was the only plan offered under the 30 day free trial. However, we recommend that libraries at least purchase the Ning Pro plan, as many pertinent features (such as chat) are unavailable under Ning Mini.

An explanation of the service you would like to create with the software

A teen portal for a public library. A place where teens can come to socialize, get homework help, and utilize a variety of tools that will enrich their education process.

An explanation of how this service will fill a need at your library, including benefits

Many teen websites function as extensions of the main library website. They are often fairly static in nature. While the sites might contain valuable information, many teens are not going to the sites due to the lack of interaction. In an age where almost all teens are participating in social networking, teen library sites need to offer more than just a bunch of links if they plan on being of any benefit. Unlike a static library webpage, Ning offers teens a chance to directly interact with the site through creating unique member profiles, uploading pictures and videos, participating in live chats, and engaging in discussion forums.

Since Ning is run by librarians parents and teens can feel secure knowing that the information being provided to them is factual and will be beneficial in their studies. Teens will have access to many items that other social networking sites can not provide such as live homework help, chances to win prizes for writing book review blogs, academic resources, health and wellness tips, and much more. Parents who are hesitant about allowing their teens onto social networking sites can rest assured knowing that their teens are interacting only with other teens from their local area.

Evidence that this technology would be useful in libraries

Teacher Librarian – This site was created by Joyce Valenza, (http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/) and is an online community comprising more than 5,000 members (primarily teacher-librarians). As a member of this Ning site you can read discussions, post comments and questions, participate in the numerous forums, check out the latest events (i.e., conferences and webinars), and join specific subgroups (i.e., Inquiry Circles Book Group, Information Fluency Project Group, etc.). Additionally, there are a number of videos, photos, and other documents posted by members on the site. Overall this site offers a great venue for fellow teacher-librarians to stay connected with one another from all over the world.

Classroom 2.0. - This Ning site (http://classroom20.ning.com/), was primarily created for educators using Web 2.0 technologies, and has over 55,000 members. In 2001, this site won an Edublog Award for best educational use of a social networking service (Rosenfeld, 2008). In addition to the capability to share photos, videos, and documents, this site also contains an excellent resource section in the form of wikis. The resources inside the wikis are alphabetically arranged entries for a variety of Web 2.0 tools. For example, some of the more notable wiki entries include blogging, Podcasts, RSS & Readers, Social bookmarking, etc. The site also has a variety of subgroups, archived recordings, as well as access to a calendar of upcoming webinars, including links to live webcasts created by Clasroom 2.0.

Rosenfeld, E. (2008). expanding your professional network with Nings. Teacher Librarian, 35(3), 60.

21st Century - Teacher Librarians - The University of Colorado Denver online School Library & Instructional Leadership (SLIL) program created this Ning site (http://21centurylibrarian.ning.com) as a means to help online students connect with each other. The goal of the site was to make sure that first year school librarians and SLIL students never felt completely isolated. To ensure this connection this Ning site offers a space for students to ask questions, opportunities to engage in student led discussions, features podcasts and videos on issues related to school librarianship, and provides information on SLIL courses. SLIL program instructors discovered early on that they needed to actively participate in order for the site to remain viable. Accordingly, program instructors post their thoughts and encourage the sharing of ideas, as well as post links to professional events conferences and workshops. Currently the site is still active and has over 400 members (Summers, 2009).

Summers, L. L. (2009). The value of social software in school library. Knowledge Quest, 37(4), 48-50.

The Education Network - In August 2008, Sarah Oxford the Academic Liaison Librarian for the Institute of Education at the University of Worcester, used Ning to create the Education Network (http://ednetwork.ning.com). At the time of its creation this Ning site was free, and has since been taken offline. Within the Ning platform, Oxford utilized features such as blogs, chat forums, RSS feeds, videos, and a notes section to reach out to patrons. She described the Ning site as “the first stop for information” and marketed the site as a medium for users to connect to other pertinent pages that she created using the Delicious and Netvibes sites (Oxford, 2009, p. 40). By far her favorite feature on Ning was the ability to create blogs. For example, one of her most popular blogs, Have you read an e-book?, contained information on the library’s growing collection of e-books. After this blog was posted, the number of hits for this promoted web page increased substantially. Overall, she praised Ning and its ability to incorporate other sites (Delicious and Netvibes) as helping to establish direct links between students, staff, and librarians.

Oxford, S. (2009). Being creative with Web 2.0 in academic liaison. Library & Information Update, 40-41.

Information Matters - In October 2009, the University of Brighton's Department of Library of Information Studies (LIS) experimented with Ning as a means to attract prospective students to the University’s program with their Information Matters site (http://informationmatters.ning.com/). Overall, researchers were impressed with Ning’s ease of use and capability of creating sub-groups that could be used for specific courses or areas of interest. However, at the time the article was written researchers speculated about the sustainability of the site, as members have to be willing to invest time in writing posts and sharing information (De Saulles, 2010). Currently the site is no longer active.

De Saulles, M. (2010). Marketing LIS courses with Web 2.0 tools. Information Outlook, 14(3), 12-14.

A list of possible roadblocks to implementing this technology

Possible roadblocks to implementing this technology include: a potential learning curve to using Ning, monetary concerns (i.e., subscription costs of $20 per month), investment of time and manpower to set up and maintain the site, facilitating active participation of users, and contending with people who do not understand the potential value that a teen social site might have for a library.

Ways that you believe you or your organization could overcome the issues raised above

In general Ning is a very user friendly site, so the initial learning curve will be an easy issue to overcome. We can address this issue by creating screencasts and video tutorials instructing users how to sign up and interact with the site. If our budget was strapped and we could not afford the nominal fee of $20 per month, then we could seek outside corporate sponsorship or grants to maintain the site, as well as elicit funding from a library friends group. To address the concern of investment of time and ongoing maintenance we will designate several librarians to be in charge of maintaining the site and this task would become part of their core job duties.

As a social networking site it is important to facilitate active participation of users. In order to entice users to participate we will offer various incentives, such as monthly prizes for contributing to blog and forum postings. To convince those who are skeptical of the value of a teen social site we will hold quarterly community meetings and present an update of the progress of the site. We will also discuss how the site has positively impacted the library including circulation statistics and event attendance rates.

At least one (or up to three) suggestion(s) of specific software you would use to implement this program in your library

For the most part, Ning is a self contained online software program that does not require the use of other software. However, as depicted in our protocol, users may want to use external software like Blogger to enhance features such as creating separate blog pages. This is especially the case when using the more basic version of Ning (Ning Mini), which precludes the creation of new pages. On the plus side, Ning does allow for the easy integration of other social networking software such as Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

A plan for the ongoing maintenance of the software and any policy or training issues you think are important to address

As stated above, the ongoing maintenance of the software will be monitored by several librarians whose primary tasks will entail facilitating discussion by contributing to blog and forum postings, monitoring users to ensure that they adhere to the terms of conditions, recognizing active users with rewards, and debugging or troubleshooting any glitches that occur in the software.

How you will assess whether or not the technology is having the desired impact

The desired impact of Teen Connection is to create a place for teens to socialize and in turn aid them through their education process. Fortunately, Ning makes the assessment of this desired impact easy with its built in monitoring system, the Dashboard. This system measures the number of members and amount of content (videos, blogs, forums) that is posted. This data provides a snapshot of the current activity level and displays which forums and blogs are the most popular. Using the Dashboard, we will be able to accurately assess the growth of our site and easily make adjustments based on members’ contributions. Our site will be deemed successful as long as members continue to actively participate.

Libraries can also look at their attendance rates at events and circulation statistics. It is our predication that with the addition of the teen social networking site both circulation and attendance at events will increase. This prediction is based on our site’s incentives initiative, which encourages teens to read books and write reviews to win prizes, as well as continuously reminds teens of upcoming events. Furthermore, our site fosters friendships between teen members, which encourages teens to meet in person and to develop lasting friendships offline.