Using Ning to Communicate with Parents

An article by Darin Wagner    No Comments

A colleague asked me if I could suggest a way to communicate with parents about their elementary-age children during the school year. She wanted a record of all correspondence, feedback from parents/guardians, and a simple way to manage it. As I listened to her needs I considered a variety of options including Moodle, WordPress, and Outlook e-mail groups. But ultimately, I recommended a Ning site for this situation.

Ning is free social networking software. Create your account, create your site, and you are up and running. So far we have managed to customize the site to meet her requirements. She has created forums to post comments and solicit feedback. Parents can reply to the posts, and to other parents’ posts but cannot delete and cannot create new conversation threads. There is also a direct link to the teacher for private, personal contact via e-mail if needed. Ning also provides an RSS feed if participants want to monitor site activity without visiting the site daily to see what is new.

This site seems to work well for her and I am looking forward to watching its development through the remainder of the school year. I am curious to how the parents will view and use this tool. I will post again later in the year with an update of the site’s progress, successes, and challenges.