Week 3 Assignment 1 – Educational Technologies Blog The two social networking sites that I believe will enhance adult learning are Ning.com and LinkedIn.com. The best parts of the Ning site for educators is that it is totally self-contained, it can be totally private, and the teacher has total administrative control (Richardson, 2010). The LinkedIn site has over 250 million plus professionals which allows the user to access knowledge, insights, opportunities, and share information and ideas. In my practice as an adult educator, I would create a Ning site with all of my students as part of the private site and assign research and blogging assignments to complete. I will also invite outside professional individuals with expertise in our area of study to join our small group of students and interact with them. This would expose my students to networking, critical thinking, and problem solving. I would use the LinkedIn site to invite my students to participate with me in using LinkedIn on our topic of study. I would also obtain permission from some of the professionals on my network to add them to the student’s site in order for them to network in a larger arena. Toward the end of the semester, the students would submit a report on the advantages and disadvantages to social networking. This would create a safe, secure environment for the adult learners to expand their networking capabilities and enhance learning. Social media is not a tool that I have used nor was it in my tool box prior to this class. The advances in technology and the increased use by all ages with social media indicates to me that this would be a very effective learning tool and one that I look forward to incorporating into my classroom. References LinkedIn. Retrieved from: www.linkedin.com Ning. Retrieved from: www.ning.com Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin