Learning Intention: To search for and record ideas in preparation for writing.

Brainstorming is a method for coming up with ideas quickly. It is a way of breaking ‘writer’s block’ - not knowing what to say or where to start. When you brainstorm, you just say what comes immediately to mind, even if it seems not quite relevant (because you never know, it might be!). Don’t worry if your ideas sound crazy ... think outside of the box. One way to brainstorm is to look up key words in a dictionary or thesaurus. Another way to is to take a central idea and do ‘webbing’, or connecting things by association:

• Space connections (what’s near, far?)
• Time connections (what’s then, now, later?)
• Part and whole connections (what’s this a part of/is a type of, what part does it have?)
  
• Difference connections (what’s it like, what’s it not like?)
• Logical connections (because, for or against?)

Individual Brainstorming. At the beginning of a writing project in Creator, do some free writing. Write down whatever comes into your head for a specified time limit, say 10 minutes. Don’t be too careful about what you write – just keep writing. If you want to keep your brainstorm ideas, create a new version. The new version will have your brainstorming ideas, which you can delete as you feel you have used each idea, or decided not to use it because it does not seem to fit ... but you’ll still have kept your brainstorm ideas in the first version.

Group Brainstorming. Use the comment box to write down your ideas. Leave evaluating the ideas until the end of the brainstorming session. This is when you decide which ideas you will definitely include and definitely exclude in your work, and ones you’re not sure about yet. Some ideas contributed by others may also spark new ideas for you.

Comment: Write down a few ideas. Write anything that springs to your mind. Separate your ideas with ellipses (...) to indicate that you still have to join up the ideas. Next, after you have submitted your comments, look at other people’s ideas. The most important rule of group brainstorming is not to criticize others’ ideas. If they are a bit crazy, it’s because that’s what brainstorming is about. In fact the crazier the idea, the better.

Learning Intention: To understand how to use the Annotations tool in Scholar.

When you are reviewing another student's work, Scholar allows you to make annotations, which are comments that are tied to a particular word or groups of words in a text. Through Annotations, you can provide more specific feedback to your peers. You’ll find Annotations at Creator => Feedback => Annotations. To make an annotation, first you need to highlight the part of the text that you are annotating and click 'Create an Annotation'.

There are two kinds of annotations:

• Make a comment
• Suggest a change (and then select the kind of change)

As soon as you make an annotation, the creator of the work gets a notification, and they can respond to you if they want to discuss your comment or suggestion further.

You can find out more about making annotations in Scholar at Submitting a Review and Annotations.

When you have completed all of the feedback requirements, go ahead and submit your feedback at About This Work => Project => Status.

Comment: Do you have any questions or comments about how Scholar works at this stage? Make a comment in this update. If you think you have an answer to another student’s question, please answer it - be sure to name the student you are replying to in your comment by including @Name.

Learning Intention: To identify what is helpful or constructive feedback when writing reviews.

There are three kinds feedback you can give, but only one kind is really helpful:

1. Unhelpful: Critical feedback, which says things are wrong with a work but the person giving the feedback does not suggest how the work might be improved. This feedback may even be hurtful if it uses language that is harsh.

2. Unhelpful: ‘Cheerleader’ feedback, which says things like ‘wow this is great’ or ‘great job’, but doesn’t explain how or why the reviewer thinks it’s great, or make additional suggestions so the writer can improve their text.

3. Helpful: Constructive feedback, which explains the reasons for a judgment and suggests changes that the creator might make to improve their work. You can refer to the rubric for specific suggestions to include in your feedback.

Find out more about reviewing a work in Scholar at Reviewing a Work and Submitting a Review and Annotations.

Comment: Do you have any questions or comments about how Scholar works at this stage? Make a comment in this update. If you think you have an answer to another student’s question, please answer it - be sure to name the student you are replying to in your comment by including @Name.

Learning Intention: To understand the phases of draft, feedback, revision and publication in Creator in Scholar.

In Scholar, you go through the following writing phases:

1. Draft: This is where you write the first draft of your work.

2. Feedback: You will then be asked to give feedback on works that your peers have written.

3. Revision: Next, you will receive feedback from your peers on your work. This feedback will help you to improve your work when you rewrite it.

4. Publication: Finally, your teacher will review your work and may decide to publish it to your profile page in Community. Once published, other members of your class community will be able to read and comment on your work.

Now, go to Creator. Do not create a new work - make sure you write in the blank work that has been created for the class project. If you open the work from the link in your Notifications, you will be sure to be in the right work. Have a look around:

• Mouse over the items in the toolbar to see the different things you can do.
• Open About This Work. In the Info tab, change the title of your work to the title of what you will be writing about. You can also include a subtitle if you wish.
• Open Feedback. Have a look at the review criteria in the Rubric - this is how the quality of your text will be measured.

You can view some short videos on how to use the Scholar workspace. These include:

• Introduction to Creator
• Starting a Work
• The Creator Workspace
• Submitting a Draft

Comment: Do you have any questions about how Scholar works? Make a comment in this update. If you think you have an answer to another student’s question, please answer it - be sure to name the student you are replying to in your comment by starting with @Name.

Learning Intention: To understand how to insert images, links, tables and other multimedia to enhance the written text.

Information texts often benefit from having media included. Your text may benefit from including:

• Images - Be sure to include a caption with a Figure number so you can refer to the image in the text if you need to. Also, at the end of the caption, name the source and insert its URL. For example: Fig. 7: The Golden Gate Bridge (Source).
• Web Links - so you can refer people to web sources for additional information.
• Tables - Be sure you include a Table number so you can refer to your table in the text. Include a caption, with the source. For example: Table 3: Population in Different Years. (Source: Author, Title, Publisher, Year.)
• You can also add videos, audio and other files that you might think are relevant to your text.

You can view a short video on using the Creator Workspace in Scholar.

Comment: Ask and answer each other’s questions about including media here, and look for answers in already-answered ‘frequently asked questions’ (FAQs).

Learning Intention: To understand how to work in Community.

Community is a social media space within Scholar with some important differences - in fact, we call this a 'social knowledge' technology because it is designed for knowledge interactions, rather than connections between 'friends' or participation by 'followers'.

To get started, when you enter Scholar for the first time you are asked to create a profile, with steps shown in Setting up your Community Profile.

In Community, you can view and make updates, comment on updates, star updates. If you make these in your profile page, the update feeds to your peers. If you make these in a community (you can only create an update if a community is unrestricted), the update feeds to all the members of that community. For a demonstration of making updates, see Introduction and Navigating Community.

You can also provide information about yourself and your knowledge experiences. If you are over 18 and not a student, you can choose from a range of privacy settings including full visibility of your knowledge profile on the web, including feeds to Facebook and Twitter. For suggestions on how to use these features of Community, view Sharing More about Yourself.

Community also supports sharing files with peers, or if the community is unrestricted, with all members of a community. For more information, see Shares and Published Works. Or, if you want to share something just with the community admin, you can use the submissions function instead of shares.

Now you are ready to interact with your peers with whom you have chosen to connect—see Peers. Or within knowledge communities—see Communities. 

Comment: If you have a question about Scholar, ask it in the comments box below this update. Another community member is likely to know the answer!

Learning Intention: To understand how you organize information in an informative/explanatory text.

Information texts on the web are divided up into sections. Use the Structure tool in Scholar (About This Work=> Structure) to outline your sections or ‘Elements’ and insert headings. Look at examples or models of texts to give you ideas for headings. You can change the order of the sections at any time by hovering over a section and choosing the icon to move sections up and down as you organize your thoughts. To create subsections, drag the icon to the right.

You can view a short video on how to use the Structure Tool in Scholar.

Use your background knowledge first and add some points under each heading. Then look up other websites to find more information about your topic. Add facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, statistics, and examples under each heading in your own words. If you copied sentences from other websites, that would be plagiarism, pretending that these are your words and ideas when they are not. When you use the exact words, for example in a definition, then make it a quotation and insert “quotation marks” followed by the source (Source: Title of the text or website).

Include technical words about your topic under each heading. These will make your text sound more informative and important.

When you have finished taking notes, create a new version of your work, ready for writing the first draft of your writing. Note: You can create more than one version of your work before you submit your first draft. Don’t create new versions unless you have a good reason. For example, you could create a first version of your work for notes, and a second version for your actual work which you submit to peers for review. The second version should be complete and well written, ready for feedback from your peers.

You can view a short video on Saving Versions of your work in Creator.

Comment: Give one tip about researching information. It can be what you have just learned or from a time in the past.

Learning Intention: To understand how to use feedback to improve your writing.

Revision is a very important phase in the writing process. By now, you will have written a first draft and also reviewed others’ drafts. This will mean that you have had to think about the review criteria again while you looked at other people’s work. This might give you some additional ideas about how you can improve your work in this new version. You will also receive feedback from your peers, which should mostly be helpful—if, in fact, it is constructive feedback.

You will receive a notification when feedback is available on your work.

1. Read your reviews carefully at Feedback => Reviews => Results.

2. Read your annotations carefully at Feedback => Annotations.

3. Look again at the review criteria that your peers used to evaluate your work at Feedback => Reviews => Rubric.

4. Next, revise your writing, taking on board as much feedback as you can. You don’t have to agree with everything your reviewers suggest. However, at the very least, you need to take their suggestions seriously.

5. Now write a self-review of your latest version at Feedback => Reviews => Review. How have you improved your work in this version? Which reviewer comments and annotator change suggestions did you take on board? How were they useful? Which ones did you not take on board, and why? When you have finished, submit your self-review.

6. When you have finished revising your work and you think it is ready for your teacher to check and perhaps publish, submit it. See The Revision Phase.

Comment: What did you find most interesting or helpful about giving and getting feedback? What could you improve on?

Learning Intention: To gain an overview of the spaces in Scholar.

Scholar consists of five working spaces, or apps.

• Community is a discussion and portfolio space that is a little bit like all of Facebook, Twittter, LinkedIn, and a blog ... and in some ways quite different from all of them. Community is dedicated to forming knowledge communities in ways that other social media are not.
• Creator is a digital workspace that is different from a processor in two important ways—it is genuinely multimodal, allowing you to combine text, image, video, audio, dataset and any other file into a composite 'work'; and it a very social space, supporting structured feedback.
• Publisher is where groups of people are organized to provide feedback on each other's works.
• Analytics provides a whole lot of knowledge and learning data to teachers, learners and participants in knowledge communities.
• Bookstore delivers content created in Scholar, including our revolutionary Learning Module format.

For a brief introduction, view Introducing Scholar.

To learn how to navigate the main spaces in Scholar, view Navigating Scholar.

Comment: If you have a question about Scholar, ask it in the comments box below this update. Another community member is likely to know the answer!

Learning Intention: To understand how to use the Rubric and Checker in Creator as you draft your work.

Some things to do as you create the draft of your work:

• Have a look at the Rubric to see what you are expected to include in your writing at Creator => Feedback => Reviews => Rubric. The Rubric can remain open as you write so you can continue to refer to it.

• Use the Checker to see whether there is anything you would like to do to improve your writing. The Checker does not tell you whether you are right or wrong, but makes change suggestions. You have to decide whether these suggestions are helpful or not. (Creator => Feedback => Checker).

Scholar saves your work automatically every 15 seconds, so there is no need to save your work as you go. When you have finished, go ahead and save just to be sure you catch your last 15 seconds of work.

You can view a short video on the Checker.

When you are ready to submit your draft. check Submitting a Draft. Once you submit you cannot make any changes to the version of the work that has been sent to your peers to review.

Comment: If you have a question about how do so something in Scholar, comment on this update. Keep looking here for questions from fellow students and respond if you know the answer. Reading questions and comments might help with a question that you want to ask - the answer might already have been given!

Learning Intention: To understand how to use the review tool to write a self-reflection on how you have taken on board any feedback.

A self-review during the revision phase is a reflection on the feedback you have received, and the ways you have changed your work ready for submission of a new, revised version (Creator => Feedback => Reviews => Review Work). Here are several things you might address:

• On each criterion, which reviewer comments or suggestions have you taken on board?
• Which reviewer comments or suggestions do you disagree with, and why?
• What changes have you decided to make that did not come up in feedback and why? Perhaps you have done further investigation on an issue, or have learned more about the rubric by reviewing others' works.
• What score would you now give yourself for the revised version on each criterion?

This is shown at 3.10.4 in The Revision Phase.

Comment: If you have a question about Scholar, ask it in the comments box below this update. Another community member is likely to know the answer!