The blog for the Complete Companion which provides extra stuff that they cannot squeeze into their books as well as providing extra resources, updates on research and answers to questions, now has a forum.
The forum allows further discussion of AQA A related issues; especially important as we are seeing much change in the specifications.
Check it out here
http://www.oxfordschoolblogs.co.uk/psychcompanion/blog/community/
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I try and encourage my students to read about psychology in the media as well as their additional textbook reading. Although there are often newspaper articles relating to psychology, there are also a lot of blogs about psychology out there, of varying qualities & interest to a-level psychology. I discussed using delicious.com to save bookmarks to posts like this in an earlier post.
A few blogs I often link from are:
BPS research digest – on current research, written for non-specialists
Mental Health Update – short posts on mental health research
Mind Hacks – brilliant blog which often throws up interesting psychology, current and historic
Neuro images – not updated so frequently, but a nice selection of brain pictures – artistic, neuroimaging and anatomical
Teaching High school Psychology – American equivalent of this blog I suppose, has nice teaching ideas and occasionally resources
There’s quite a nice category-specific list here:
http://generallythinking.com/blog/the-28-best-psychology-blogs-on-the-internet-organised-by-topic/
Fuller list here (which should also get updated):
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Psychology_blogs
The researchdigest recently posted a list of psychologists who tweet, which includes me (tweeting on a-level related psychology news). I turned that into a twitter list (so you can see all their tweets in one place).
To follow these links, I use googlereader, there are alternatives but they’re all fairly similar – the video below shows how I use this to:
1) follow blogs I want to read
2) read them & mark them as unread or starred
3) send specific posts to delicious/twitter/email
Sorry this video is a bit long – if I get time/remember I’ll try and create a shorter version.
If you use any other blogs for psychology teaching, do comment.
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If you teach AQA (A) psychology you may be already aware of this site. Keiron Walsh has developed alevelpsychology.co.uk The site has a blog, lots of free resources and my favourite – Resource of the Week.
Do have a look around the website.
This post could also be an opprtunity for teachers to add any AQA psychology blogs to the comments for other teachers to enjoy.
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Like most psychology teachers, I simply do not have the time or inclination to read numerous psychology journals but still like to keep up to date with the latest research which is relevant to my teaching. Thankfully Christian Jarrett, editor of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, has created an excellent blog for psychology teachers and students. On the blog Christian provides wonderful summaries of recent research and links to the actual research articles if you want to delve deeper. The blog now has a regular readership who are more and more starting to make comments about the articles. If like me you become a fan of the digest you can subscribe to the blog and you will find that there are a number of ways that you can do this.
We asked Christian about his incredibly successful blog and this is what he had to say.
So many journals, so much new research, but so little time? Fear not – the British Psychological Society’s free Research Digest service trawls through the world’s journals so you don’t have to. Each fortnight the BPS sends out an email crammed with fun reports on the latest psychology studies relevant to the A-level syllabus. Also, recent additions to the service include – ‘Extras’, which are links to eye-catching studies that didn’t make the final cut; ‘the Special Issue Spotter’, which flags up new journal issues that are devoted to a specific topic; and ‘Elsewhere’, which gives you links to psychology-related magazine and newspaper articles that are freely available on the web.
The Research Digest is also available online as a blog, allowing you to comment on featured research and to subscribe by RSS feed. Some of the reports in the Digest – such as the case of the man who became a human chameleon after suffering brain damage, or the experiment that showed wiggling your eyes back and forth can improve your memory – have become so popular they’ve been picked up by other media organisations around the world, like the New Scientist blog, the American news channel MSNBC, and even German internet TV.
On top of all that, the Digest occasionally features guest articles specifically tailored for students. There are links to these on the blog. So far there have been features on psychophysics, twin studies, psychology podcasts and using the web. Forthcoming is an item on psychology studies conducted in virtual worlds, and a guide to systematic reviews. Also, every now and again the Digest hosts special anniversary projects. Last year, to mark its 3rd birthday, the Digest asked the world’s leading psychology bloggers to discuss an experiment from the last three years that inspired them or that changed the way they think. Later this year, another project is planned to coincide with the 100th issue. The topic is top secret but is guaranteed to be fun – - if you don’t want to miss it, make sure you subscribe to the Digest email or blog!
If you are a teacher of any of the psychology specifications you should find Christian’s blog invaluable. However if you teach the OCR specifications Jamie Davies has set up psychblog.co.uk which is a blog similar to Christian’s but with a focus on research which relates to the OCR specifications. As with Christian’s blog you can also subscribe to psychblog to ensure that you do not miss any new research.
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BPS Research Digest