Inspired by Michelle Martin’s use of Ning for our Better Blog community, I decided to take a huge leap and go right out on a limb, which may well break and set up a etools and tips community using Ning for my live online session on “Video in E-learning” for e-Tips n Tools for the 2007 Australian E-learning Networks.

Why Ning?

• It’s designed to appeal to users who want to create networks around specific interests or have limited technical skills
• So members can let me know what information relating to video in e-learning they would most like to find out about
• So experienced members can share their tips such as their favorite video sharing sites, how they create online videos, how they create screencasts and how they convert video formats
• As a site for session participants to embed videos during the live session
• To demonstrate how an online community’s knowledge gain is greater than a person working individually. Collectively a community will always help each other more effectively than I will ever hope to achieve
• To showcase why communities are important for personal learning

While my initial reason for using Ning relates to my live online session, Ning is a social networking site so the site is not about me, or I, but is about US. This group is open and WE, not I, invite you to join.

While initially we’ll be discussing video good practices however we plan to keep this site going and expand it to include other cool tools for e-learning for education and training.

Help US show other educators how to effectively learn in a community!

To Join eTools and Tips Community

If you’re already a member of Ning (the platform we used to create the community), you just have to go to etools and tips community and then sign in.

If this will be your first time joining a Ning network, go to this page and sign up for your account where you’ll also be able to join the community. If you want to learn more about how to use Ning, check out my How To Use Ning information!

If you have any problems or questions, as always feel free to email me suewater [at] gmail [dot] com or leave a comment.

I hope we’ll see you at eTools and Tips!