Thing #22 Nings

I have never heard of ning's before today and I was intrigued by the idea of a facebook type group based around a single interest but I found ning to be cumbersome, difficult to navigate, and lacking in any real value. This is more than likely my personal bias based on my utter distaste for myspace and facebook. The conversations on the future of education ning where often a great initial post or idea but degenerated into advertisements, name-calling, and irrelevant information rather quickly. I was much more impressed with the level of conversation in various blogs that I continue to search. As nings develop further it could potentially replace the AP physics listserve which I subscribe to that is a long an cumbersome email process but it isn't there yet for me. I also checked the educator ning and although it was a little bit better and slightly more organized I still find it not nearly as useful as the blogs that I found earlier.

I guess the biggest problem that I have with the idea of nings, or facebook is that everyone is an expert even when they are unqualified.