Nexus

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Horizon Project 2008 when I can steal away for a few minutes and am very impressed with the efficiency of the students as they get themselves organized into their focus groups and assign individual and group responsibilities.

The project was officially opened more than two weeks ago with a keynote by Don Tapscott, Canadian author of Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Tapscott’s opener, while short, covered a lot of ground. The role that technology plays in the lives of today’s students is a key focus of the message, but for me the key point is pedagogical. Tapscott makes the point that there is nothing more important for teachers today than transforming our model of teaching and learning. He strongly states that our current pedagogy must change.

We are all aware that our current model of teaching and learning, in many cases one-way and teacher-focussed, has remained virtually unchanged in the past century. I agree with Tapscott that this model is irrelevant and ineffective for the current generation of students who prefer learning experiences that are student-focussed, highly customized to their needs and interests, and collaborative in nature.

There’s a huge disconnect between the way many of us have learned in formal settings and ways this generation prefers to learn. We were isolated in the learning process, and individually accountable for demonstrating “what we knew” using methods defined by teachers. Today’s students prefer to learn in connected groups. I’m sure we will soon be reading more news stories like this one about the Ryerson student who faced an expulsion hearing for being the administrator of a Facebook study group. He was charged with academic misconduct because the professor required that assigned problems be solved individually; the students in the study group were collaborating on problem-solving techniques. The hearing ended with penalties for the student as well as an action item - he is required to take a course on academic misconduct. Unfortunately, what we didn’t see in this case was action required of the professor and the school - i.e. to examine the kinds of proof we are asking to see to demonstrate that learning has taken place. The school would do well to have a look at the expectations and assessment criteria so clearly laid out by Horizon Project organizers Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay.

Even if you’re not taking part in the Horizon Project, Tapscott’s keynote is well worth a watch!

Technorati Tags: Horizon Project 2008, Don Tapscott, Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay, hz08, hz08_keynote

David Warlick, consummate story-teller and king of the metaphor has done it again - kicked off the K12 Online Conference in style - entertaining, engaging, stimulating, and challenging us to “Invent the New Boundaries“. The video takes a while to download but is well worth the wait. The audio file of course downloads faster. Use it for your second listen; you’ve got to watch the video!

Warlick states that he is not comfortable using this video style of presentation in the absence of feedback from a live audience. I have to say his stated discomfort is not evident to the viewer; he seems completely at ease in front of the camera, setting up his shots in interesting locations, engaging even bystanders. I admire Warlick for continually pushing, breaking down and re-inventing the boundaries. He reminds us, not in words, but through his actions that we need to move beyond our comfort level in order to explore our personal boundaries.

I think that at least on an theoretical, if not practical level, most educators would agree that the nature of learning is changing in the information age and the traditional school boundaries are disappearing. Warlick outlines for us three new conditions that are converging in our classrooms, which have the potential to be the new boundaries off of which we can gain needed traction to move learning forward. There were quite a few attention-grabbing ideas here for me!

Condition #1

Students are more info-savvy. They are accustomed to rich information experiences, connecting with the world through “invisible tentacles” in the form of multimedia, mobile phones, video games, and social networks. They look to a network of people who can help them learn what they need/want to do.

In rather graphic terms, Warlick asserts that in schools we are “chopping the tentacles off…because we want our children to be the students we want to teach, rather than teaching the students that they are.” Wow, puts a whole new spin on all of the filtering, blocking and banning we are doing!

Condition #2

There is a new information landscape. On a daily basis all of us must make decisions as to what information we are going to use. Warlick states: “In the information age, information must compete for attention…in exactly the same way products on the shelves competed for attention in the industrial age.” I hadn’t thought of it in this way but it concerns me. I see lots of evidence that students are being swayed by “glitzy packaging”.

Condition #3

We are preparing students for an unpredictable future. Very tough assignment!

There are so many conversation starters in Warlick’s presentation and there are a number of ways to get involved. If you blog, tag your posts k12online07pc. Do a blog search for that tag on Technorati and join the conversations that resonate with you. David has started a wiki and invited all of us to edit the pages to comment and join the discussion as he fleshes out the concepts. I for one intend to take him up on the invitation!

Technorati tags: k12online07pc, k12online07, Warlick, K12 Online Conference 2007

I am a passionate learner. Never am I more energized than when I am learning and contributing to the learning of others. Having said that, I rarely get as excited about organized professional development opportunities as I am about the K12 Online Conference set to start tomorrow, October 8, 2007!

Last year’s conference completely changed the way I look at PD. Never again will I sit through a one-off “sit and git” presentation.

For me the conference started off with a real eye-opener in David Warlick’s Keynote, Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning. In his opening remarks Warlick stated:

You’ll spend some time paying attention to me and others, but the best part of this conference will be the time that you are reflecting on what you see, hear, and read, and then writing in your blogs and populating wikis, and then reading other people’s reflections, and reacting.

How true! I was enthralled by the video/podcast format that allowed me to pause, stop, restart and replay the keynote presentation as needed. I spent a remarkable day working through the one hour presentation as I engaged in my own learning sidetrips:

• I paused the podcast and explored the links to Blogger and Edublogs. I set up accounts at both and “played” for a bit.
• Back to the presentation…
• Paused again, this time to explore Bloglines. Found several interesting feeds there to which I subscribed. I wasn’t sure at that point whether or not I needed an RSS Reader; man, have I come a long way in a short year :-).
• Stopped, this time to get some work done…hate it when that happens…
• Back to the presentation, …paused at conference HitchHikr. Wow! I’d never seen this application before. Spent a long time exploring the related blog posts and cloud tags. I made connections to bloggers I’m still reading.
• And then there was the keynote wiki! At that point I was aware of Wikipedia, but I’d never seen a wiki used in any other context. I spent a long time there, exploring the wiki interface, following the links, but most importantly reading and reflecting on the comments left by other participants who were also taking their own sidetrips through Warlick’s presentation.

What a thrill! And that was just one keynote from a packed conference agenda!

This year’s conference promises to be just as exciting. Here’s the welcome message from the conference wiki:

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is Playing with Boundaries. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by David Warlick the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

I’m so looking forward to this year’s conference. The theme, “Playing with Boundaries” is very à propos given what we’ve all learned this past year about active participation through all of the back-channelling, sharing, blogging, tagging, and twittering activities in which we’ve been involved. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in Canada; so there’s no need to start the day with my nose to the grindstone. I can’t think of a better way to kick off the day than David Warlick’s keynote. If you can’t “make it” tomorrow, don’t worry…enjoy the presentation when it best suits your schedule. The conversation will continue long after the event; just join in when you’re ready! See you there!

Technorati tags: K12 Online Conference 2007, k12online07, k12online07pc, David Warlick, professional learning

This is a question that has been tumbling through my mind recently. I’ve spent this past week as a guest of the Canadian Space Agency, touring the Kennedy Space Center, and watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. That means I have spent my time in the company of people who, at the very least, have a profound interest in space exploration.

I had the opportunity to listen to some snippets of conversations that were occurring all around me that presented misconceptions as fact. I was surprised in this environment for instance, to hear people talking about the “zero gravity” environment of the Shuttle and the Space Station. This is a very commonly-held misconception, certainly among the students in our ISS07 project. The reality is that there is lots of gravity, about 90% as much as on Earth. In fact, it is the Earth’s gravity that keeps spacecraft (and the Moon) in their orbits around the Earth. Therefore a better, and more precise way to describe this environment is to call it a “free-fall” environment. In orbit a spacecraft is actually falling (accelerating) directly towards the centre of the Earth. (The astronauts inside are falling at the same rate and therefore float). It is only as a result of the spacecraft’s enormous horizontal (tangential) speed that it is able to maintain a more-or-less constant distance from the Earth’s surface.

So what does this example mean for educators? I’ve been listening to or taking part in conversations with many edubloggers over the past year about the need to give our students the tools and experiences required to develop the skills to build personal learning networks. I’m getting the uneasy feeling that at least some of us are assuming that authority will reside in the network. As my gravity example shows, the group, or by extension the network, can be wrong. What then?

Where do we go for authoritative information? I’ve noticed a trend in responses students have been posting to challenge questions in both of our Polar Science projects and now our ISS07 project; students start with Wikipedia. I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, especially as a starting point. But should students stop with one information source?

In a recent post on his Connectivism blog, George Siemens states that the popularity of Wikipedia is due not so much because it is an authoritative resource, but more because it’s good enough and easy enough to find what he calls “quick and dirty” knowledge, such as “How is beer made?” Siemens states:

Wikipedia provides “gap filling” information, not necessarily foundation information on which we base world views. For foundational world view information, we don’t rely on a singular resource. We blend many - experts, our own experiences, our own thinking, influences of colleagues, articles, books, and so on.

David Warlick in today’s post talks about plans to add a comment feature to Google News and the implications this will have for authoritative journalism. Warlick asks:

So, where’s Walter Cronkite when you need him?

This takes me back to the question I asked a couple of paragraphs ago, where do we go for authoritative information? If there ever was, there certainly is no longer, a comfort zone, a respected authority under the watchful eyes of authors, editors, journalists, experts. The answer lies in what Warlick calls new literacy habits:

The only comfort — our ONLY safety — is in people who are critical thinkers, skilled information workers, who ask questions about the answers that they find — by habit.

Develop that habit in the context of what Siemens calls “blending” many information sources, and then I think we can have confidence in the authority of personal learning networks.

Warlick says:

That puts the ball in our court, teachers.

Amen! And what an incredible responsibility and exciting challenge!

Technorati tags: Canadian Space Agency Kennedy Space Center Space Shuttle Endeavor gravity misconceptions edubloggers Wikipedia Polar Science ISS07 George Siemens David Warlick Google News

As I mentioned earlier in my “Uber-blogging” post, I’m taking the time to really process the implications of backchannelling for both my own professional learning and its relevance to the way we structure learning opportunities for our students. I have quickly come to the conclusion that I must develop some new skills myself and re-think some social norms before I can get a clearer picture as to how backchannelling can work in the classroom.

I think a little historical perspective is called for first as background to what has become my own social norm for classroom behaviour. I spent 20 years teaching French as a Second Language (FSL). I used a communication problem-solving approach wherever possible and trained students to use all possible clues to make meaning of what was being said. Of course that includes social norms such as context, facial expression, body language, gestures and tone of voice. These clues are most effectively deciphered through attentive listening. I have come to expect that attentive listening includes eye contact; therefore making eye contact became a social norm in my classroom. Even when I moved out of FSL and taught special education, language arts and computers, I still hung on to my predisposition for eye contact. It was one of my preferred strategies for engaging students with ADD. When students came into my computer lab, they were expected to take a seat at a workstation and then face the center of the room where I would give my short preamble setting up the tasks to be accomplished that period. I did not want to hear the tap, tap, tap of the keyboard at that time - I expected full attention.

Look at this picture. It comes from Brian Crosby’s NECC07 Edubloggercon Flicker photostream. Before you read on, describe in your mind what you are seeing.

The photo was taken during one of the Edubloggercon unconference sessions. The arrow is pointing to me; I was the one talking at that point. What do you notice about the other people in the room? Do they appear to be engaged with the speaker? Very few people were looking directly at me, and I could hear click, click, click, as fingers flew across keyboards. I have to admit that at first I found it difficult to speak, (even after factoring out that I was totally awestruck by the composition of the group). What you don’t see in the picture is David Warlick sitting across the circle from me. He was facilitating the discussion and although he was typing as well, he looked up from his keyboard and made eye contact on a regular basis as I was speaking. I clung to that lifeline to persist in getting my point across.

Were the members of this group listening attentively?

You bet!

Were they engaged in the conversation?

You bet!

Had they all developed skills I still need to work on?

I think so!

Members of this group, the uber-bloggers I referred to previously, have developed the skills needed to listen, think, keep up with the comments they are reading, think, compose their own responses to commenters, think, ask questions for clarification, think, post notes to their blogs, think, type, think, and jump into the F2F oral conversation as needed! Wow!!! So many questions run through my mind. Can I develop the skillset to multi-task with such intensity? Is my age a limiting factor? Have my life and learning experiences resulted in a brain that is wired in a linear fashion? Can I re-wire it through new experiences? Happily, I can answer the last question with “I think so”. I’ve been following the Tuesday night chats of WOW2, and am becoming much more comfortable listening to the speakers and following and taking part in the chat. I know I will need much more practice before I reach a point where I can facilitate a discussion that includes simultaneous F2F and online components.

In the archived chatcast, (from the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston this summer), where David Jakes “hosted” the Skype session of Ewan McIntosh’s presentation - Is Your Public Body Public, Dean Shareski states:

90% of teachers would be having a heart attack right now

I agree. At first glance this looks like “note-passing” on a grand scale. Given the opportunity to conduct a skypechat session during a lesson how would students react? What skillset would they bring to the experience? Although they seem to be able to multi-task, and naturally chat in numerous conversations at the same time, is their processing/thinking focussed or scattered? Will they bring the same focus and intensity to the conversations as the adults did in my example above? What will be the balance between on-task and off-task chatter? Clearly this is a deviation from the social norm I’ve been expecting in my own classes. What effect will this type of student activity have on the way teachers facilitate the F2F component of the conversation?

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that this new mode of learning activity is worth pursuing further. Do a blog search for NECC07 or BLC07 and you’ll come across numerous examples of archived skypechats or blogger notes. There is such rich content - of value for participants in the original conversations and non-participants reading the archives. Wouldn’t it be incredible to open up the learning that takes place in our classrooms to this kind of participation?

Darren Kuropatwa invites us to imagine the possibilities in this post reflecting on the BLC Conference:

Imagine a 20 minute lecture where all your students back channel about what you’re saying. Outside guests or experts are invited in. Someone acts as a “rudder” to keep the conversation on track. The discussion is displayed on a SMARTboard or with a projector. The chatcast is immediately dumped into a wiki. The rest of the class is devoted to reorganizing the wiki clarifying what was said, answering questions (student to student as well as teacher to student; and don’t forget the people, students, teachers, mentors or parents beyond the glass walls of the room) summarizing the big ideas, reframing the discussion in terms of what needs to be explained again and where we’re going next. Imagine the possibilities …

Imagine indeed! I have a “gut feeling” that backchannelling activities may democratize classroom discussion, changing the dynamics as to who drives the conversation. In a recent post, Instructional Scaffolding, Konrad Klogowski lists ownership of the learning event as a key characteristic of successful instructional interaction. He states:

The project can be initiated or suggested by the teacher as long as the student has his or her own reasons for participating in the activity and is given opportunities to develop the topic as an independent researcher.

I think the kind of back channelling activity I’ve witnessed so far will pull students into learning ownership.

You’ll be hearing more from me on this topic as I try to think through my questions, and I have so many questions…

Technorati Tags: backchannelling discussion learning activities Atlanta Edubloggercon NECC07 NECC2007 BLC07 BLC2007 Skype chatcast Brian Crosby David Warlick WOW2 David Jakes Ewan McIntosh Dean Shareski Darren Kuropatwa Konrad Klogowski

On her blog, Musings about Using Technology as a Tool for Learning, Sharon Peters talked recently about the “evolution of the über-blogger“.

I love the phrase, “uber-blogger”, and wish I’d thought of it. The following is based on a comment I made to Sharon’s original post. It (my comment) seems to have vanished into the blogosphere, but I thought it was worth writing, so I’ve added to it and posted it here instead.

I wasn’t sure what to call this phenomenon, but it is extremely powerful! I first witnessed it during NECC 2007. I was only able to physically attend the Edubloggercon immediately before the NECC conference and then had to return home. Once home, I used my RSS reader to follow the rest of the conference. One of the first feeds I pulled in was a skype chat posted on Jeff Utecht’s blog, from the Skype conversation held during Will Richardson’s presentation, “From Hand It In to Publish It: Re-Envisioning Our Classrooms“. This just blew my mind! There were eleven people involved in this conversation. Some of the participants were physically present in Will’s presentation; others were “skyped in” from elsewhere.

In itself it is extremely valuable to read the notes and interpretations of edubloggers who so freely share from the conference sessions they attend. But to see the conversation that took place among that group of skypers during Will’s presentation was extraordinary! It added so much depth to what was already an outstanding presentation conference session. To get a feel for yourself, try this:

• Open Will’s wiki page and follow his session outline;
• Listen to the podcast of the session posted by Wesley Fryer;
• Follow the skype notes posted by Jeff Utecht.

Do you get the same sense of “Wow!” that I do? This is blogging on a new level, hence uber-blogging.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I was travelling last week in Saskatchewan and following the Building Learning Communities conference being held in Boston. As I followed the conference via Google reader, I found that the backchanelling activities started at NECC not only continued, but flourished. Cathy Nelson wrote about her experiences taking part in BLC07 sessions by skyping David Jakes. Just search her blog for BLC and you’ll see the incredible impact this type of participatory activity had on her professional learning - and she didn’t physically attend the conference!

I also noticed that the uber-bloggers were honing their new skills. David Jakes in my mind is becoming a master at facilitating backchannelling sessions. Here’s a good example. David “hosted” the skype chat for Ewan McIntosh’s session - Is Your Public Body Public? Read through the chatcast and you’ll notice David played a role beyond conversation participant. He facilitated the chat by:

• reminding readers/skypers of the session title
• articulating main points as they were introduced by the presenter
• summarizing main points
• clarifying skypers’ comments

Last but not least David added a few text conventions such as italics to make it easier for the rest of us to follow.

Call it what you will - uber-blogging, backchanelling, whatever, there’s a lot to think about here and I know I need some more processing time. I need to think about this from different perspectives: professional development leader, project designer and facilitator, teacher, learner…

Right now though, I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the uber-bloggers who so willingly and effectively share these rich learning experiences!

Technorati tags: blogging uber-blogging NECC07 NECC2007 NECC 2007 NECC 07 BLC07 BLC 07 BLC2007 BLC 2007

Here I am in sunny Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, accompanying my husband at his national optometric conference. Before me lies the gift of four days to do as I please! Of course I’m going to explore the city, shop, and walk the beautiful trails along the Saskatechewan River that runs through the city. I brought along my PDA so I can check e-mail, approve registrations on our ISS07 project and keep up with my Google Reader feeds. But since there is only so much shopping and walking you can do, (seriously), I thought I’d also “attend” a conference.

The Building Communities Conference is currently being held in Boston. Not an easy commute from Saskatechewan! No worry, I’m using my RSS aggregator (Google Reader) to bring the conference to me. This is the power of tagging! Bloggers who are attending the conference are tagging their posts with either blc07, blc 07, blc2007 or blc 2007. All I need to do is use a blog search engine to search for those tags. I like Google Blog Search because it integrates seemlessly with my Google Reader and displays nicely on my small PDA screen. Since I can read my Google Reader RSS feeds offline, once I’ve downloaded them to my PDA, I can browse through the blog posts about the conference from park benches as I stroll along this beautiful river. Now that’s the way to attend a conference!

I could put links here to all the things I’m learning, to share with anyone who might be reading this post. But you know what, I’m not going to. This is my learning - personal, and highly effective for me! From David Jakes’ invitation to be skyped into sessions, to Ewan McIntosh’s invitation to get a free front row view of the conference, complete with vidcasts and podcasts from his blog, I feel personally invited to pull in these feeds, digest them at my leisure, and make my own connections and meaning from the conference. This is professional learning that works for me:

• pulled in from the network of edubloggers I’ve been reading and interacting with
• accessible anywhere, at any time
• interactive, as I can post comments on the blogs where the writer has made points that resonate with me.

I encourage you to take charge of your own professional learning. Fire up the RSS reader of your choice and immerse yourself in the ideas and issues that matter to you.

Now, I’m off to explore the Saskatechewan River!

Technorati tags: blc07 blc 07 blc2007 blc 2007 professional learning

I had such a treat this past weekend. I attended the 100th birthday celebration of the teacher I had for most of the eight years of elementary school. I haven’t seen her in decades and at 100, I wasn’t sure how I’d find her. What a thrill to reconnect with this alert, bright, energetic woman! She remembered my name, when and where she taught me, and the names of my siblings. She apparently also followed my career, knowing much of what I’ve accomplished in past years. As I was leaving, she told me to make sure I looked at the notebook she had compiled of her years teaching at our school. More than an hour later, I left with a much better sense of my own history than when I arrived!

In the past couple of years, this remarkable educator has painstakingly compiled a notebook for each of the schools, all rural one or two-room school houses, at which she had taught. In beautiful cursive writing, was the record of her career, and a record of part of my life. There were “class” photos for every year, students lined up by grade, me always “shepherding” the little ones. There were lists of the “honours” achieved by the students. I have a memory of being lifted up on a hay wagon, (at the age of 6), and reciting a poem at the fall fair. I was awarded a ribbon I know, but I had no recollection that that poem brought county honours to our little school and was a source of pride for the teacher. There were lists of the musical numbers and plays performed at every Christmas concert and who the lead performers were. Every class trip and special event was recorded. There were yellowed newspaper clippings that chronicled newsworthy events and important achievements of the students of our little schoolhouse. I had forgotten about many of those achievements.

I attended this little school house from 1957 to 1965. Unfortunately, I’ve been in some schools of today, where there are more similarities than differences in the way the learning experience is organized. Learning (in school) was a typically linear process, in that there was a rigid daily schedule, (reading at 9:00, followed by Math at 10:00), and an equally rigid grade structure. But I realize now that for me that was the very beginning of my need for expanded and connected learning experiences. I read in a copy of some kind of yearly report to the county superintendent that reading was being capably taught by one of the students (me), who had “much patience to try many approaches with even the slowest of students”. I remember my role as teacher’s aid; I didn’t know that I had in effect became the teacher. (Is there any wonder my only career goal was to become a teacher?) These were valuable experiences for my own learning. They provided a built-in spiralling where reading, for instance, didn’t neccesarily happen at 9:00. It happened as I listened to the story discussions of the older grades, and as I found my own techniques to teach the younger students. Through connecting all of those experiences I became a more proficient (and self-directed) learner.

The gift I received yesterday from my centenarian teacher, the gift of memory, was far more valuable than anything I could possibly have given her. What will my legacy teaching archive look like if I am ever fortunate enough to reach her age? The only thing I know for sure is that it won’t be beautifully captured in cursive writing. It’s looking to me that it will be digital and distributed; beyond that I have no clear picture. Check back in forty-five years…

Technorati tags: ontario canada rural schools

Lately I’m starting to feel like a nomadic blogger. In one sense that’s perfectly fine; many conversations that take place in the blogosphere bounce around from blog to blog, needing no fixed place or time. Ideas cross geographic borders in a heartbeat and find welcoming hearths in diverse locales. So, does it really matter where I blog? Until recently I thought not.

I blog with students, teachers and scientists on all of our collaborative project blogs:

• Polar Science
• Phoenix - Out of the Ashes
• International Space Station 2007

I blog with teachers, students, and pre-service teachers on all of the Ontario Blogs sites. I blog with educators exploring the concepts and tools of Web 2.0 on the Classroom 2.0 ning social networking site. And last but certainly not least, I comment on the blogs I read, (if I feel I can make a contribution to the conversation that justifies taking up blog real estate).

So what’s missing?

One of the most important things I’ve learned this past year is the power and wisdom of the “network”. Through the “magic” of RSS, I have been able to pull together an incredibly effective personal learning network from the edublogspere. I have learned more in a shorter period of time than at any other point in my very long career - from reading, commenting, reflecting and conversing with edubloggers. My learning network has become almost organic; it changes as my own thinking progresses and morphs as conversations start, finish and evolve. My Google reader regularly drops and adds feeds, letting me pull in, aggregate, tag and take part in the conversations that resonate with me at any given moment.

What I feel I’m missing is a way to add to the network, to nurture connections I’ve made and forge new ones. I need a way (or more specifically a place) to pull my thoughts together or just let them flow organically, a place to both start conversations and archive my thoughts and experiences. This is the place I’ve chosen to settle - a tiny, new node in the network. Welcome!

Technorati tags: personal learning networks edublogs connected learning