Those of you who have been losing sleep over the withdrawal of free-Ning and its likely impact on the HEFCw funded enhancement project “A Peer Support Network” need worry no longer. The pilot social network EG-353 Research Project has been re-born, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, as a group within the even more ambitious Social Engineering site (named for the Lunch and Learn title for which I have to thank Chris Hall) briefly described in previous post “Plan B“.
Social Engineering will, hopefully, be the site that rolls out the idea of a peer support (social) network across the whole of the School of Engineering. It’s based on the open-source Elgg platform and is running, in the swan.ac.uk domain, on a server located in a lab next door to my office. It’s raw, it’s unfinished, it’s dangerously wide open (and for that reason I’m not posting the link!) but it’s working, and students are starting to come.
For those looking for a less stressful way of creating and maintaining a social network, see my previous post “Alternatives to Ning“. The subscription fee funded “pro” version to be hosted at elgg.com, due to be launched in May, may well be worth a look.
