Tips by Tony

A couple weeks ago Ning announced they would be discontinuing their free offerings, moving to paid-only services. Since Ning has been adopted by many educators/schools, many were wondering if education would be given a free pass. Today we got our answer. In a word: no.

Ning announced they will be offering three versions: Ning Pro, Ning Plus, and Ning Mini. What we had for free in the past was closest to Ning Plus, but with the ability to upload videos (something now reserved for Ning Pro). Ning Plus is $199.95 per year, per Ning. Ning Pro is $499.95 per year, and Ning Mini is $19.95 per year.

Ning also announced that Ning would continue to be free for education – sort of:

We’ve also heard from many Network Creators who use Ning in the classroom as an integral part of their curriculum. I am particularly excited to announce that a major education company will be sponsoring Ning Mini Networks for educators in primary and secondary education. Ning will remain free for K-12 educators and their students. We’ll have details on this program soon!

I see two huge problems with the so-called free Ning for education:

1. Ning Mini is free, not Ning Plus or Ning Pro. Ning Mini is nowhere near what educators have been using, and is nearly unusable: only 1GB of storage, no video uploads, no audio uploads, no groups, no events, no notes and pages, etc. So, in other words, all the things that made Ning useful for education are no longer part of the free service.
2. Even if you could get by with the free Ning Mini for education, it’s only free because a “major education company” is sponsoring the service. What happens if that major education company decides it’s no longer prudent to do so? What happens if Ning decides $19.95 per year isn’t enough to sustain their business model?

There was a very interesting discussion about the Ning announcement on #edchat today. Some felt a sense of entitlement: everything should be free, all the time, for educators. This sense of entitlement is wrong. Nobody is entitled to anything they want, free of charge, no matter how noble their use or intentions.

This is a perfect opportunity to move existing Nings to free and open source tools, hosted on district servers. Having worked in IT at the district level, I know there’s often pushback on new initiatives. However, this is a golden opportunity to get some great tools like BuddyPress or Elgg installed at the district level. (I’m leaning towards recommending BuddyPress installed on top of WordPress MU.) There is financial incentive to do so, and district IT departments are often worried about information hosted outside of their control – use this to your advantage. Help them see the value of hosting services at the district level.

Related posts:

1. My thoughts on the iPad