540 Week 5

Good news to report! My Dell laptop came back to life. As much as I wanted to have a Mac, it isn't really in my budget. I need to pay for grad school first!

This week, we were working on Google Trends. But, I have a different question that is completely unrelated. I have my junior/senior sociology kids working on a ning right now. And, I would like to create a wiki/ning/moodle (or something similar) for my 90 freshmen history kids. However, I am trying to figure out the pros and cons of each.

I used a wiki with my 7th graders. It worked for what I wanted it to do. But, I am not sure that it is the correct forum for my 9th graders.

The ning that I created for my 11th and 12th graders works well for them, and they appreciate the break from moodle. However, do so many teachers in my district use moodle because they love it, or because they are familar with it? Is it worth exposing my students to the ning, just so that they can become familar with something else? Can the ning do all that I want it to do for my kids? And, if I couple that with Google Docs, will that meet all of my needs? I will continue pondering. If you have any advice, I would love to hear it!