July 2008 - Posts
News of our Newspace, our Ning sites for news students, has been picked up on a number of blogs around the community, so I thought it worth summarising the reaction, and giving a quick update.
First one is from Tony Hirst from the OUsefulInfo on OUwith a posting 'Institutional Social Networks' , which starts saying
"Reading the feed from Michael Webb's Blog yesterday, I was.... stunned is probably the best word, to read his post "Newspace - a social networking site for new students"
I'm not sure if that's good thing or not! Read Tony's post and decide for yourself.
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus from UKOLN, picks it up on "Institutional Use of Ning", and says
"I welcome this development - and I am particularly pleased that Michael is being so open in describing the reasons for this decision, the possible risks and how the institution has responded to the risks."
Thanks for the positive feedback!
I also found posting about it on Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog and the tfpl blog , so I'm glad we are doing something of wider interested.
So a quick update.
Firstly, a quick thanks to a couple of my colleagues that did the hard work in getting it going - Allan Theophanides did all the hard work getting the site content together, including the Google maps and events, and, more importantly, getting the staff and mentors on board, and then organising the invitations to the students. If you want a site like this, it's crucial that someone takes this role, after all, a technically great site with no content and members is not much use! Secondly, to Jon Ingram, who sorted out the look of the site (it's based on an existing template, but Jon sorted out the logo, picture and CSS).
So how's it going? So far, really, really well - in a lot of ways it's turning out to be one of the most exciting projects I've been involved in. Feedback on the site is terrific, so far we've over 300 members (we're only a small institution, and have only invited two schools so far), and the quality and quantity of the communication is amazing! It's really working - students are using the site to make friends, share their excitement, create their own home pages, reassure one another and ask questions.
Obviously we won't know it's true value until the start of term, and maybe it's just initial enthusiasm, but, wow!
I'm also really glad we decided to make it a closed community. I'm sorry, that means that a lot of you won't see it, but I really don't think it would work if it was a more public space.
This post is really triggered by my iPod Touch, but really applies to most handhelds/smartphones etc I guess, especially the iPhone..
As I said in a previous post, I've put the new 2.0 software on, which does a couple of things. Firstly, you can get 'Push Email' from Microsoft Exchange, which means as soon as you receive an email it's pushed to your iPod which beeps, and secondly you can install lots of other applications. Most of these aren't really work type things (eg Last.FM), but some blur the boundary (Facebook is mix of work colleagues and friend-friends, Twitter is mostly works stuff).
Before I go on, it's worth saying I'm a bit of a music obsessive. I've heard a lot of people say they never go anywhere without their phone. I never go anywhere without my iPod (I've got a 30Gb Classic as well). Maybe if you don't listen to music as much as I do none of this matters.
I've ended up with a really odd mixture - as an iPod, something I'd listen to to relax, and now, perhaps with the Touch, get in touch with a few friends, but there, in the corner is an icon telling me I've 27 unread emails, nagging away. And then it beeps to tell me I've got another message. Now, I like my job, but sometimes I need a break from it, I need to recharge. And am I the only one that sometimes reads a work-related email over the weekend and then wishes I hadn't because you can't do anything about it until Monday, but it still gnaws away at you over the weekend. With web mail its fine, as I actively need to go and check it, but with the iPod, it's there, sat in the corner of the screen, hard to ignore.
How do Blackberry users cope? Is it less of an issue, because the Blackberry is really just for messaging? I've got an HTC Windows Mobile Smartphone, but I never switch Push email on - I just fetch it if I need to when I'm off site.
I ended up switching Push email off for the weekend.
I'll probably finish up using two iPods, my 'classic' for music, and the Touch as a work email device.
You can't have missed the new iPod launch, but the upgrade to the iPod Touch has received a lot less publicity. Basically, for £5.99 you can update your iPod so you get the full Microsoft Exchange email client, and the ability run iPhone applications. This turns your iPod into a fully fledged PDA - far more elegant than any of the Windows Mobile equivalents.
The upgrade is painless, and to set up Exchange mail you just need to tell it you mail server address (my.newport.ac.uk for Newport users), your user name and password and you are away - you get Push email, and contacts and calendar synch over WiFI as well (this wasn't possible over WiFi on the old iPod Touch).
So far I've installed Twitterific (Twitter Client), Last.FM, NetNewsWire, Facebook and AIM. LastFM is my favourite, it creates personalised radio stations based on music you listen to, and you can then listen to other people's stations to discover new new music - a perfect application for the iPod. Sound quality is bit rough though... (it's streamed)
We've just create a social networking site for new students at the University, http://newstudents.newport.ac.uk. It's based on Ning - it's early days yet, but so far it's been pretty interesting, so I though it worth talking about some of the technical and management issues.
Lets's start with what we wanted to do. The brief was to create a social place for students coming to the University to meet online before they join the University, and to be able to contact the student mentors. We'd done this the year before with our own MyCommunity forums, and it worked pretty well, but this year we wanted to provide more functionality, and, well, provide something a little more 'cool'.
So our options - do something ourselves (our usual default position I guess), piggy back onto an existing service (eg Facebook), or go with one of the new wave of 'create your own' social network sites, like Ning.
After about 10 minutes playing with Ning it was pretty apparent that it would do the job, and we could get the site up and running, customised etc, in a very short amount time. In particular, it was great for showing people's photos and profiles, we could add our own profile quesions (what course, interested etc), users could create their own groups, own events and so on, so take ownership.
So what were the barrier to just launching it? We were actually looking at doing this for next academic year, so if we just launched it we'd be a year ahead of schedule.
So..
1) Are we comfortable with Nings T&Cs? Yes, we retain ownership of content. Hosting location is ambiguous, but the data isn't that precious.
2) Ning isn't completely free. You get 10Gb of storage and data, but how much we would use? And the tools to monitor usage aren't there. It doesn't seem much to add extra ($10 a month), but how much would it actually cost? I don't know the answer to this, but my estimate is that we can afford it...
3) No single sign-on. But we are all used to managing multiple user accounts now.
4) It's got adverts. Hmmm. We can pay to get rid of them, but organising regular payments by credit card isn't that straight forward for us. Strangely, must people didn't notice the ads until I pointed them out, at which point they wanted them removed. The ads are provided by Google - rightly or wrongly that makes them seem trustworthy, so we've left them in for now.
5). It doesn't have a Univesity URL. Should we make it look like a University provided service? For a few dollars we could host it in under our own domain name, and no-one would know it was a Ning space. But we decided this wasn't necessary. Ning is new enough that nobody is suffering Ning-fatigue (I think a Facebook group would have been met with groans all round...).
6) Could we get enough people on board? - after all, no student wants to be the first to join an empty community! This was surprisingly easy. A few chats, emails, and message board posting and we've got over a hundred staff and student mentors ready to meet our new students - we'll start inviting the students this week, although some have found it already. Staff at all levels have been very positive about the whole thing.
So, it's a slight risk. I guess I feel most uncomfortable about not knowing the costs, but it's not going to cost very much. And because it's targeted at new students there's a straight forward exit strategy when they are no longer new students. Or maybe not.. staff have already started to feel comfortable in the space, we've got a virtual staff room, and our first subject group created.
Probably the biggest discussion was whether to make it open or closed - ie visible to everyone on the net or not. We've gone with closed - we feel we need to protect our users privacy given we are inviting them into the space, and having a closed space makes it feel a little more special.
We won't know how much value it's really added until the start of the term, but at the moment it's looking good - maybe it will turn out to be one of our more valuable contributions, and for very little technical effort.
It's certainly given me food more thought about how we provide services in the future. If we had created the site ourselves it would have taken months. If we had bought in software it would have still taken weeks. This took days. And no worrying about upgrades, downtime etc. What have we lost? We can't control the development of the service - our users probably don't understand this, and have already started suggesting functionality improvements.