Concerns of cyber-bullying, predators and distraction are inhibiting the use of social networking resources in schools. The  many benefits of these resources to student learning have been recognised and consequently educational alternatives have been developed to overcome the disadvantages. Some include, Ning, Elgg and EctoLearning. 
Educational networking sites like these provide a safe environment controlled by the school district that enables students, parents and educators to actively participate in the use of 21st-century social networking technologies.  


Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace MySpace

This site elaborates on the features of Elgg that promotes and encourages a safe alternative to other social networking resources, enabling access to online socializing in school systems. 
What is Elgg?
Ellgg is an open-source social networking software developed at the University of Brighton, has been designed specifically with academic uses in mind. Students, tutors and researchers each get a profile page, a blog, photo sharing and friends lists, and they can create and join on-site discussion communities. 
What are the positive features? 
The collaborative, conversational exchanges that occur outside the school in social networking sites like myspace, twitter and facebook can now be used in the safe alternative of Elgg. It creates a collaborative, conversational and informative environment to allow learning to take place in a context relevant and instructive to students.  Most importantly it is a shift from one teacher spouting information to the creation of a personal student centered learning environment, where resources like blogs, podcasts and articles can be read and communicated with ease. In an education context, it will allow students and researchers to collaborate outside the walls of their own institution


EctoLearning: 

EctoLearning is Social, Collaborative Learning.

New resources are are being made to give social networking an educational foundation form the bottom up, removing any risk of extra curricular networking that may lead to bullying or exposure to inappropriate material

EctoLearning is a social, collaborative, online learning environment that directly addresses the needs of the modern learning environment by making the new communication skills and competencies for content creation and sharing central to the classroom experience.

EctoLearning is also a full Learning Management System (LMS) with attendance tracking, grade book, and a sophisticated assessment engine including the use of rubrics based evaluations.