Unsure About Social Networking

I am officially a member of two, yes 2, social networking sites now. However, I am not totally convinced about the educational implications in regards to using them with my students. After reading about MySpace, Facebook, and Ning, I feel a little more comfortable with Ning since it is more used by educators. I like the fact that your profile can be public or private and administrators can sensor the content that their students let others view. Additionally, the fact that Ning doesn't require a lot of personal information to get started makes it more attractive to me. I personally can't see using it with my students mainly because I don't have my own classroom. I work with small groups for 30-45 minutes at a time, with those groups constantly changing and sometimes being cancelled without notice. I also don't think parents would be keen on the idea of their child using a social networking site without their constant supervision, like when they're at school. That being said, I absolutely think its a great idea to communicate with students using other media tools that are available. For example, I really want to try Gaggle, although time will still be an issue. I'll let you know how my students feel about it. In the meantime, my Ning address is : lheffner.ning.com and you can also find me on Facebook under the Appalachian network.