Recently I was asked for advice from from a colleague in the educational sector in regards to choosing an online tool for a group of educational administrators. He told me they were a group who were not particularly tech savvy and wanted something to help them share practices around school initiatives they were launching within their Board. He saw the platform as an open space where people can think and share their ideas freely. They opened a site on blogspot.com however he added that they may have some money available to pay for a platform with more to offer than blogspot. His personal criteria was that as long as it was the user friendly, easy to manage and an accessible platform available to individuals who not only have varying degrees comfort with using social networking but also have a range of hardware configurations (and firewalls). In sum he stated that “basically I’m looking for the lowest common denominator”. Well his criteria was a bit fuzzy, but without talking with him in person, I offered these suggestions.

Blogging Platform:

Blogger is fine for publishing and engaging others in conversations. My view is that it very plain with clunky and limited options for look and feel (personalizing.) Think of it as those early AOL browsers that did everything for you and projected a feeling you like you had to have your hand held every step of the way as you navigate through the web. It’s like making beer, there is the basic (blogger) where your pour a can of malt in a pot, add water and wait. Intermediate (wordpress.com) Add malt to the pot, add water, hops, different grains for different flavours and cook it up. Advanced wordpress, self installed is for more experienced brewers who like to control all aspects of the product.

So, my recommendation is the wordpress blogging platform. It’s easy to set up, free, open source and built by leading edge programmers from around the world. You don’t need or use any html and the editor in the admin dashboard is very straightforward. If you choose to use a self hosted wordpress blog you will probably need some support and guidance but less so once you have your blog set up. When you do the self hosted option you have total control over your look and style of your blog. Also, you can have someone custom design your site so you have just the look and style that you want.

Networking Platform:

Far and away, I recommend the Ning Platform. It’s very customizable, easy to use, plenty of add on’s such as discussion forums, blogs, video, slideshows, movies etc. What I like is that each member of your network can customize their own page. In the Premium levels you can pay $25 per month and have the adds removed and for a few dollars more you can have your own domain name.

Wikis:

If you are wanting to have a more collaborative platform for your group you can use a wiki. Pbwiki and Wikispaces are the two that I am most familiar with. Both have plenty of features with upgrades avaialble for greater security.

Some final thoughts:

I think much will depend on what degree openness you want for your group of practitioners. Having a blog is most suitable for conversations and sharing with a wide audience however you can contain your blog membership as well. There are specifice types of blogs that do this well. Google it and you will find plenty of options. For networking, the Ning Network is great and collaborating any wiki will do fine. Some are better than others but you can experiment and find one to your liking.

Brent Uncategorized platform wikis blogs ning