Not all online learning networks actually thrive, here’s a tale of a failed attempt by myself:

I have been involved with a couple of projects in Manchester as part of a collaborative of schools from across the city. Part of this was the continuation of the LEMA project and the creation of some great resources that I have discussed elsewhere.

During this work the idea of an online space for sharing links, ideas and resources was mooted.  I jumped at the suggestion and went to work looking for a solution.  A Ning was the first obvious idea, I’ve been part of some excellent examples over recent years, although my use of them has dwindled since Twitter invaded my time.

One of the key requirements for the website was the ability to store files, Ning can’t do this inherently.  We could have used another online file hosting service and linked to it, but many of these are blocked by school and LA filtering systems.  Having ruled out Ning, I found a similar competitor called Grou.ps .  This startup seemed to offer all that we needed, a space for sharing links and resources, a forum and blog posts if things really took off.

[Read more...]