what's+this+all+about

=WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?=

Last term you had a homework task of finding an article about a psychology-related topic that was of interest to you. You brought a copy into class and shared a little about it and what you found interesting.



This term as the major focus for your homework each week - other than your occasional graded assignment tasks - you'll be spending a little time collaborating as a group and sharing links, sites, resources and information on psychology that you feel are valuable and interesting. As a class we're setting up what's called a //Personal Learning Network//. Our class is the beginning of that network and we'll use some social networking tools to work together and share ideas and information.

We'll be using three key tools for our collaboration, as outlined below. We'll get started with these in class, and __if you need to revise how to use them you can visit our "**how-to**" page__. And don't forget our **online projects rules for students**. **1. Edmodo** Edmodo (www.edmodo.com) is an education-based social networking site (think "Facebook for school"). On Edmodo we have a private discussion group with a feed that works a bit like your Facebook news feed. Your teacher can send you notes, alerts, assignments and tasks via Edmodo to all members in the group; and you can message each other too. Our Edmodo group is a closed or private group, only the teacher can invite, and all communication in the group is monitored by the teacher. Edmodo is purely for schools and education and students can only join a group by invitation with a special group code from their teacher.

**2. Diigo** Diigo is a social bookmarking and website annotation tool. We have a group on Diigo too, and basically it allows anyone in our group to share a website (with notes and annotations) with the rest of the group on-the-fly. It allows highlighting of text on the shared site, sticky notes, etc. It's a great way for a group to collaborate on research and share resources quickly and easily. You'll pick it up pretty quickly.



**3. This Wikispaces Wiki** This class wiki is where we can "publish" the results of our research to the world. We can share what our class has researched or explored, resources we found interesting and useful, and ideas for new directions. Once again all students in our class have a wiki student account, and you are able to add to and edit the information on this site. As your teacher I've made a start, but the idea is that you take ownership of what ends up on here. It's up to you how much you contribute, but I'm hoping you all will regularly.

We'll get started and go through some how-tos in class, but for an overview of wikis in general there is a good video below. The video uses the example of a group of friends wanting to plan a camping trip rather than do research together, but the principle is the same.

media type="youtube" key="-dnL00TdmLY?fs=1" height="405" width="500" align="center"

I hope you will enjoy and get a lot out of using these tools to collaborate as a group, share ideas and contribute to each others' learning. Along the way, hopefully you'll learn how to keep using some of these networking tools beyond our class and into the future too.