---
title: "The Ning Interview"
date: 2006-09-04
url: https://learningischange.com/2006/09/04/the-ning-interview/
author: Ben Wilkoff
categories: ["Uncategorized"]
tags: ["resources"]
---

# The Ning Interview

Early last week I was asked by Yoz Grahame (a lead developer of [Ning.com](http://www.ning.com/)) to answer a few questions about how I was using web 2.0 tools (and specifically Ning) in my classroom to be used in a post for [the Ning Blog](http://blog.ning.com/). I was quite surprised and a little flattered that people are actually noticing what is going on in my own little digital bubble.

When he sent me the questions, however, I was impressed with the depth that they were calling for. So, I took on them as a challenge and answered them as completely and with as much cogitation as possible. The two questions that struck me the most (and produced a clear sense of focus for the year’s worth of teaching with technology) were about new tools that I want to use this year and new tools that I wish would be created this year. Because I found these two questions to be most illuminating for my own practice, I would like to challenge the greater Edusphere to answer them and share out all of the tools that they want to use and wish were available.

- Are there new tools that you’re looking forward to using with students?

> I’m looking forward to setting up wikis with my kids. I am also looking at geocaching as a way of exploring more authentic nature writing. More specifically I am excited about using the following websites to encourage content creation and a love of reading and writing: 1. [Writely](http://www.writely.com/) – For collaboration on writing dramas or stories. 2. [Glypho](http://www.glypho.com/) – For collaboration on storytelling. 3. [Quickmuse](http://www.quickmuse.com/) – To make poetry writing more transparent. 4. [Trackslife](http://www.trackslife.com/) – To track writing progress. 5. [Standpoint](http://www.standpoint.com/) – To create belief statements about reading, writing, and life. 6. [Vaestro](http://www.vaestro.com/) – To create an audio forum to talk about blog posts. There are some others, but these are the ones I am looking forward to most.

- How about tools that don’t exist yet, but should? Do you have any particular designs or wishes there?

> 1. I really would like rss to be more versatile. I would like to see any webpage that I want within an RSS reader and only see what has been changed since the last time I looked. 2. I would like my students to be able to create content in a fully functional word processor/video-editor/image-editor/webpage-editor and be able to post to any service that they wanted without having to log-in to their individual pages. 3. I would like blogs and wikis to become more like one another. (Blogs should be more editable, wikis should allow for more community.) 4. I want a way of controlling what all of my students see on their computer screens without having to buy remote desktop software. (In other words, I would like to have a live (and hopefully free) screencasting tool.) 5. I want podcasting software that uses voice recognition to create transcripts of each podcast to be read while you read. 6. I want a tool to discuss literature side-by-side with a digital copy of the book. 7. I want to be able to tag, put a sticky note on, or comment on/rate anything (pictures, videos, websites, blog posts) and have anyone with a browser be able to see these things without having to download anything or sign up with any service.

Yoz e-mailed me back about some of the items on my wishlist. He gave me a few resources ([VNC](http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/), [Coner.ning](http://www.concer.ning.com/), and [Castingwords](http://www.castingwords.com/)), but none were really what I was looking for. If anyone who reads this knows about anything that would fill one of my wishes, please leave me a comment. More than that, however, I would love to see what you wish for in the coming year of creating classroom 2.0.