I can't begin to tell you how much difference that Art Ed 2.0 has made in my teaching. Through this social network for art teachers, we have found collaborators for projects like Rotoball, our Olympic Artist Trading Cards, and more. I've found thought provoking ideas that have prompted new possibilities in my classes, and received much in the way of useful advice and suggestions.

That is the main reason that I've begun three networks on Ning for my students, the students of my colleagues, and hopefully - your students as well.

Photography:

The first network THE . LENS (mentioned earlier) - is a place for photography students to share their work, collaborate on ideas, and exchange suggestions and advice. The ability to create embed-able photo albums in ning makes this a great site, as each student can create a series of albums of their own work. I'm having my students import their work from their Flickr accounts, so that they can store and share their work in another powerful image sharing network as well.

Digital Video / IB Film:

The second network is Student Filmmakers. Each Ning user has a blog space, where students can post film analysis essays. In addition, they can post their own videos- likely we will be embedding our videos from Youtube, Teachertube or Vimeo, to take advantage of the larger 2.0 community and not overload the limited space on the Ning site.

IB Art:

At the prompting of my colleague Ellen, who wanted an online space for her International Baccalaureate Art students, I've helped her create a network forIB Art Students . Although this is a highly specific network, it can be very useful to create an individualized space such as this, where classes working with similar curriculum and the same standards and benchmarks can compare and evaluate their work and that of others. IB Art teachers are encouraged to bring their students into this network and share the great work that they are creating.