While reading through my tweets the other day, I saw a link to an article written in response to the announcement that Ning will be shutting down their free network service and any existing free networks must either pay or close.  This decision has been very stressful for many educators who have formed vibrant Ning communities and use them as part of their PLNs or for projects with their classes.  Bob Sprankle, the author of the article I linked to, had some interesting things to say about this situation.  While I find myself agreeing with much of what was written, I disagree with his ultimate conclusion.

Sprankle writes:

However, let’s face the facts. Unless we’ve built the tool/environment/resource ourselves (and that means taking on the care and expense of bandwith, storage, servers, etc.), we are continually at the mercy of the resources we use. In effect, we are sharecroppers who work the “digital land” and fill it up with the “fruits of content,” (which benefits the “landlords” with advertising revenue) but could be kicked off or left behind at any minute. Even if you are in fact paying for the service (and not relying on the generosity of Google Ads, or other revenue keeping the site alive), that service could still disappear literally overnight due to business, economic, or even philosophical decisions that we have no say in. (emphasis added)

Sprankle is absolutely correct by pointing out that relying on free (or even paid) third-party services leaves educators (and, by extension, their students) at the mercy of their digital “landlords” and reduces them to the status of “sharecroppers” toiling for the benefit, not of themselves, but the “landowner” who collects the ad revenue from traffic brought to the site by the work of his tenets.  More so, business decisions often result in the shutdown of free services and the loss of years of hard work.  We’ve seen this over and over, with some of the more recent example’s being Yahoo’s closure of Geocities and Google’s shutdown of Lively.

Two more quotes from Sprankle:

If our Nings (or fill in the blank with any other service) suddenly disappear, then we will have to do that “adaptation and transformation and flexible creative problem-solving thing” right now. Not our students in the future, but us —their teachers— in the present.

and

I think about all the hours that many of us have invested in teaching and coaching and coaxing the reticent teachers into joining these communities [Nings]. For many people, this was their introduction to the power that a global Personal Learning Network has to offer. I fear that some will lose interest or commitment in maintaining participation if they suddenly see all their efforts turn to dust, and are told that we need to pull up stakes and go find some new land. We’ve all been believing that we are “settlers” in the digital networks, and it’s a blow for some to find out that we are actually “nomads.”

Here’s where, in my opinion, Sprankle gets it wrong.  He’s not wrong in saying that the Ning decision will force educators to do some creative problem-solving in the immediate future.  And he’s not wrong in saying that some educators will loose interest in participating in similar communities in the future for fear of seeing all their hard work vanish yet again.  No, where Sprankle gets it wrong is his assertion that we are not “settlers” but “nomads”, forced to move from place to place to suit the whims of others.

Remember the part in the first quote I placed in bold type?

Unless we’ve built the tool/environment/resource ourselves (and that means taking on the care and expense of bandwith, storage, servers, etc.), we are continually at the mercy of the resources we use.

True settlers own their land and the tools they use to work it.  Nomads and sharecroppers don’t.  In the early days of the Internet and the World Wide Web, it was very difficult and expensive for an individual or small organization to establish an online presence.  But that’s all in the past.  With inexpensive domain name registrations, affordable Web hosting, and free open source software, it is time for educators to become digital settlers, stake their claims, and control their own online destinies.

That creative problem-solving Sprankle mentioned?  Direct your efforts toward establishing an online presence that you own and control.  Create new personal learning communities that are controlled and owned by the educators that are their members.  Don’t let your hard work and contributions be lost when the next “landlord” decides to foreclose.

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