NINGs in the classroom

[Joy Marie Foust]

Recently, I collaborated with a World History teacher to create a project using Ning. We created a Ning for the 30 years war and each student was responsible for creating a profile for a famous person involved in the historical conflict and interacting as that person would when responding in the forum, on peoples' walls, creating events, etc. It resulted in a really interesting product and I must say that I have NEVER seen these students work so intently on a reasearch project! I wonder: has anyone done something similar with a work of fiction and had students create character profiles?