Connect with TES for education-ning?

...or can your school roll it's own - also no cost?
A few weeks ago there was news that the Times Educational Supplement (TES) was launching its TESconnect socialweb. The site enables teachers to network, share teaching and lesson planning resources.

My first thought was great, but my second was, what took them sooo long?

Why was there a need for a study to confirm the trends? In fact, a quick web search would have revealed the tens of dozens of teaching socialnetworks already setup at Ning.

Ning enables anyone on the web to customize & launch their own social network. If you can use word, powerpoint and navigate on your PC you can use Ning.

So why did we have to wait for the study 'The Digital Staffroom: How social networking and resource sharing are transforming teaching', involving 5,000 teachers across all aspects of the teaching profession, to highlight workflow & productivity issues within the sector?

Ning was featured as far back as february 2007 in Wired magazine (online). Why are we such laate adopters when it comes to the socialnetworks and the socialweb?

Resources/links

TESConnect - launch news
http://www.tsleducation.com/newsrelease_220808.asp

TESConnect
http://www.tes.co.uk/

The Thing That Is Ning - wired magazine online (feb 2007)
http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/02/the_thing_that_.html

Ning in education - Using Ning for Educational Social Networks site
http://education.ning.com/

Ning - create your own socialnetwork website
http://www.ning.com/