There seems to be an “explosion” of new social networking applications that would let teachers create “walled gardens” where students can post their work and communicate easily with each other. When these tools are used in this way, Vicki Davis calls it “educational networking.” Steve Hargadon has also posted a list of many examples of using this type of social network by teachers and students.

We’ve been exploring some of them to see if one would be suitable for our international Sister Classes project. Right now Webjam seems to be one we might try. We might have used Ning, but it’s blocked by my School District’s content filters.

There are just so many, and I just don’t have it in me to investigate them all and develop a “The Best…” list for them.

I thought what I’d do is list them all here, along with links to posts in other blogs that describe them when available.

If you’re involved in education and are using one of them now, or have the time to investigate some, I’d like to invite you to write a short paragraph summarizing your thoughts about each one you want to write about, send them to me via a blog comment, and then I’ll put them all together for a future “The Best…” list.

Here they are:

Ning

Brica Box

Big Tent

Spruz

Webjam

Snappville

Six Groups

Crowdvine

Mixxt

Qlubb

Lefora (here’s a post from Mashable about it).

Soceeo

Neetz (Free Technology For Teachers has a post on it)

Collective X

Intodit

Grou.ps

The Village

Wackwall

Let me know if I’ve missed other sites, too.