Cha-Ching – A Ning is Born

I really struggled to develop an idea for my Major Digital Project for my EC&I 831 grad class. Since I am not a teacher/administrator as most of my classmates are and actually not currently in the workforce, since I am on maternity leave, brainstorming ideas was that much more difficult. I met with Dr. Alec Couros to discuss my options. He left things pretty open and understood my unique situation. I told him about the e-learning software that I had implemented just prior to my maternity leave and we decided that I could design some on-line learning lessons and exercises. Unfortunately, there were too many barriers to the option and after I gave it more thought, I REALLY wanted to try more of the tools that Web 2.0 had to offer which we are learning about in class.

In a previous post regarding my frustration, Laurie and Jennifer suggested the topic of Mom/maternity leave. I thought that might be a good idea, but after joining Mom Reality, I did not know what I could possibly add or do different since this site was so great already. Cindy told me about her project where she is combining two projects.

Eventually, I decided to focus on human resources and produce something around that. My next hurdle was in deciding what format I wanted to use: wiki vs. ning. Since our other class project is a collaborative wiki and our class is hosted on a wiki, I decided to try out Ning ( where you can create your own social network relatively easily and at no cost). I also like the design features of Ning a bit better than those available on wikispaces, which was likely where I would have created a wiki.

After a lot of brainstorming, a fair bit of frustration, and a lot of support from others, cha-ching! A ning is born – introducing….The HR Connection.  Please check it out, become a member (you don’t have to be an HR professional to join), and hopefully you will learn something new.

Stay tuned for further developments…