Using 'Ning' in the classroom

Hello fellow bloggers: I have firstly put in a link to a U-Tube video which displays the uses of Ning and how it works as a social networking tool.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGb83rrs7WQ

So what is Ning?
Ning is a platform for creating your own social network. With Ning, your social network can be for anything and anyone. You start by naming your social network and choosing a combination of features (photos, videos, forums, events, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. You can then customize your social network's appearance and launch it! People who join your social network will automatically have a customizable profile page and will be able to message and friend each other.
Concerns for Ning within the classroom context:
My concern with Ning is the security issues that may arise, although I have not completed my research on this tool I believe that passwords would need to be very explicit and we need to consider how do we give our students access to our private Ning site and prevent them from accessing the inapproapriate Ning sites too? If we allow www.ning.com to pass through our Internet filter we might have more problems than we imagined. Are school systems prepared for this? An educator posted a message saying that he had approached his ITC technicians for access to Ning, and they allowed him access to just one page of one network, the rest remained blocked.

So I hope this is achievable as I feel this is a really good tool for KLA's such as Literacy and The Arts. Students could retell a story from the point of view of a different character. This could then be shared by the class as they add to their ning page. Another great tool for collaborative learning.

References:
http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2695