With the changes in Ning, Kigluait has begun the process of migrating from Ning to othe Social network capable sites that are available to teachers.

This means this also gives us a chance to model a new tool that teachers can use in their classrooms.

After much research we boiled it down to 2 alternatives to Ning. Now for those that are not aware, Ning is a social network environment that allows for the creation of groups, events, friends with members, blogs, resource sharing etc. In general, an environment where like minded people can join together, share and learn.

So what is out there that can replicate the same services, is free and provides safe features, Buddypress by Wordpress. Gro.ups also provides much of the same similar features, but has the added benefit of being hosted for you. No need for installations or plugins.

So which one to use? Well, we are going to take a year and test out both to see what you as teachers think and prefer.  Kigluait Adventures Social net is now located on gro.ups and Flash Kennels can be found on the Kigluait Buddypress installation.

So which one is best for you as a teacher, well have a look at the features and applications below:

Gro.ups: Membership Required, Groups, Events, Blogs, Forums, Member Profile, Widgets. Friends and rewards. May be blocked by districts. Very easy to use and setup. Just create an account. Applications: Setting up a classroom space for sharing assignments, blogs etc. is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom.

Buddypress: Groups, Events, Blogs, Forums, Member Profile, Widgets.Friends and awards. You must install and host the site on your own server. Applications: Setting up a safe protected space for sharing assignments, blogs, etc.

A close runner up however is Edu2.0.org. This full feature and safe environment is wonderful for housing classroom interactions, but limited at connecting in terms of social media.

All in all the KEA crew has had a pretty restful summer- just what the doctor ordered after a very busy winter and spring! (This past year was our busiest ever! Overwhelming really, which has spurred us to restructure some of the ways we structure our programing- but more on that below.)

A few events of note, however, did bring us out of our restful slumber. The most exciting of which is a new partnership with Whirlidurb that will allow us to offer more multi-point conferencing options in the upcoming year. We are really happy about this because last year we had many more conference requests than we could possibly fill.

We have worked with Shane and Roxanne, the masterminds behind Whirlidurb- for a number of years and couldn't imagine a more exciting, energetic, and knowledgeable pair to be partnering with. And, to kick it all off we helped to present “Novel in an Hour” at this year's ISTE conference. Great fun was had by all as we introduced the power of videoconferencing to a whole new crop of IVC educators!

Speaking of fun, did you catch the IVCplayground at ISTE? We were there in full pirate garb... yo ho ho and shy the bottle of rum! Which we appreciated as yet another great opportunity to help introduce videoconferencing to excited educators. Thanks go to ISTE, and especially all those who took up the task of organizing the playground, for inviting us to participate. Thank you.

And finally, as many of you who have been conferencing with us for the last few years may have noticed, our “junior musher” has been steadily growing up. Yep, Rich's little brother isn't so little anymore! In fact, he's off to college this Fall and all of us wish him the best of luck. We'll miss him. He's always been a huge help both in front of and behind the camera! Those cold and dark winter mornings are going to be just a bit lonely without him. On the other hand, Christina and Rich's son is revving up for his first year of junior racing, so perhaps there will be a new “junior musher” to visit with this year!

Last school year, 2009/2010, we experienced our busiest year of programing ever! And, while we are very excited about that, as many of you know, we are just a simple, family run business. There is just three of running the entire operation. We like it that way. It fits the vision by which we started KEA in the first place: to share our combined interests in sled dogs, the outdoors, and education with students around the country to motivate learning.

But we were very concerned that the volume of program request we were receiving was eventually going to effect the quality of our programing. Also, we were simply running out of time in the day to actually run the programs!

So we have done some restructuring to help us serve you better and maintain our own sanity and sustainability.

We have separated our programing into three categories:

1. On-Demand. This is essentially the same type of programing we have always done. You select the program you want, the date you want, and the time you want. Then we work closely with you to meet your needs and you meet with us one on one for the program. We have had to raise our prices a bit on these but they are still on the low end of most private content provides and for cheaper than any other provider who actually takes you outside into the environment that the program content is discussing! (For classrooms that these price increases may create a hardship for, please look into our Monthly Multi-Points.)

2. Monthly Multi-Points. Thanks to our new partnership with Whirlidurb we are now able to offer a monthly multi-point conference of our most popular programs- Mushing Alaska and Meet a Musher. These conferences run on the first Thursday of each month at set times and are offered at a lower cost than the On-Demand programs. We will never meet with more than 3 classes at a time and they have been restructured to incorporate classroom to classroom interactivity, as well as interactivity with us and the sled dogs.

3. Special Events. Like the tittle suggests these are special events that cover unique topics that we only offer once a year. They occur on the third Thursday of each month and are run on the same price and time structure as our Monthly Multi-Points.

We hope this restructuring meets the many needs of all our participants and, as always, welcome and need your feedback to continue to improve our programming!