Wiki rebus

I gave my second year student teachers a 7 day project to tackle this week. It involved them going off in pairs and researching the psychology of the internet, as represented in a number of activities including blogging, using social networks, and effects such as the reduction of social cues, respellings through txting or 'rebus', and the nature of online relationships. They were asked to address a number of questions related to their research topic, and not only post them to their Wetpaint wiki, but also create a PowerPoint presentation (some incorporated these into the wiki) for discussion by the whole group.

They uncovered some useful websites on internet psychology - Problogger (Darren Rowse) figured prominently in their reviews with his excellent post 'the psychology of blogging', as did Dr Rudhran's blog on the psychology on the web and a number of other blog sites. They are also using John Suler's superb hypertext book called 'The Psychology of Cyberspace'. All good stuff. It was probably the psychology of online relationships presentation that created the most amusement for the group, but the most heated discussions came about as a result of the presentation on txting. The discussion centred on whether txt language was actually an evolving language, or simply an aberration of acceptable English. The presentations continue on Tuesday and so will the fun. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing what the 'psychology of the wiki' group come up with.

This has been a great group activity, and with the Wetpaint wiki there to capture and link together all of the results, there should be a fine legacy resource for the students to draw on when it comes to writing up their assignments. So if anyone out there is stuck for a teaching idea to try out....

(Image source: gasear.wikispaces.com)