With the support of JISC (part of the Higher Education Funding Council of England) www.theFaculties.org has made approximately 300 films of lecturers speaking on themes and topics from the A-level curriculum.

More than 30 of those themes are in Psychology  – see www.thepsychologyfaculty.org  More will follow in the coming weeks. The videos also offer advice to A-level students about where they might study Psychology at University, and about the careers that can follow their degree. .

Although this resource has only just been launched it is promised that in time it will cover the entire UK A-level curriculum. It is possible on the site for Psychology teachers and students to suggest further topics and ways in which the expertise of academic Psychologists can be employed in the secondary school classroom.

www.thepsychologyfaculty.org

The Brain: A Secret History-1. Mind Control  – available until Jan 27th. This ep will be repeated on bbc4 on Jan 11th. Next ep is on – emotion (jan 13th, then 14th)

How Drugs Work – 1. Cannabis – available until Jan 27th This ep will be repeated on BBC3 on Jan 9th, 10th, 11th, and 13th. Next ep is on – ecstasy (Jan 13th, 14th & 16th)

What Makes Us Clever? A Horizon Guide to Intelligence – available until Jan 19th This ep will be repeated on BBC4 on Jan 12th

EDIT 11.33 (thanks to Hilary Paul on psychexchange):  10 things you need to know about losing weight is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ksh7c/10_Things_You_Need_to_Know_About_Losing_Weight/ and available until Jan 13th (can’t find it’s proper site so not sure if it’s being repeated)

V. frustrating that these things get consigned to the iplayer cliff edge of doom…there are (illegal I assume) ways to download them but given they’re repeated this week it should be possible to record them!

Boardworks.co.uk is giving away free (Christmas related) resources for stress and the social readjustment rating scale.

The resources include an interactive table that students can use to work out their total Life Change Unit score across different scenarios, and an accompanying worksheet to use with the activity about the stress Christmas can bring.

http://www.boardworks.co.uk/as-psychology_464/product-blog

Thanks to THSP for this (as below):

In today’s NYT: an incredible array of articles, interviews, videos and interactive games that are just begging to be squeezed into a unit on cognition or memory, or at the very least as filler for 15 minutes. Among the highlights:

• Tracing the spark of creative problem-solving (features insight, with interactive puzzles)
• An unbelievably speedy champion crossword puzzle solver (and a special crossword to boot)
• A great article on famed memory patient H.M. and how he continued to solve crosswords
• Students at Brown show how crossword constructing is done*

And there is so much more, on topics like jigsaw puzzles, mind-bending puzzles (which came first, the chicken or the egg?), and a great essay on puzzles by the usually mute magician Teller of Penn & Teller. Enjoy solving!

Perhaps something in there for those last lessons of term!  Enjoy!

Boardworks are giving away free psychology resources aimed at research methods in psychology

Boardworks offer complete curriculum coverage across 21 secondary subject areas and in psychology they have a comprehensive coverage of AS psychology.

The AS psychology interactive resources include a wealth of exciting, stimulating and fully customisable ideas, including case studies, virtual experiments and exam tips.

Here is the link to the free downloads page.

http://www.boardworks.co.uk/as-psychology_464/product-blog?email=3004818

Looking for a way to spice up your lessons? Students fed up of powerpoint and poster activities? Here are some other options, I particularly like prezi because it allows a fantastic conceptual hierarchy.  For example, this (rough) one for Working Memory Model

BPS Research Digest

via 9 evidence-based study tips.

“The September issue of The Psychologist magazine is a free-to-view student special containing a feature (pdf) by the Research Digest editor on the journey from A-level to Undergrad psychology, including the following 9 evidence-based study tips.”

Which can be found on the digest/in the magazine.  Get them thinking about studying psychology, using psychology.

Before we get back to school and we (or at least I) am too busy to think about anything much beyond getting through the weeks, I thought I’d put a bit more of a substantive post up.  This is about how I use shared bookmarks to help me store resources, provide ‘extra reading’ (or media) for students, and use this alongside psychexchange resources.

If we go to www.delicious.com/sjgknight.  By using the ‘tag bundles’ on the right, you can select ‘psychology’ (under ‘subject’) and relationships (under ‘PsychTopics’).  At the moment this will bring up about 70 bookmarks, we’ll narrow that down again to ‘sexual.selection’ bookmarks (see video for more detail on using delicious)

Using the same principles, you can navigate all of my bookmarks – subject, to topic.  Within each topic you can see which sub-areas have been most frequently tagged (Eyewitness testimony, or ‘EWT’ under ‘memory’, for example).

Using the ‘sexual selection’ bookmarks, I’ve used the Seinfeld clip www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsusKuZ1uL0 to get students thinking about sexual selection and attraction.

Following that you could use the videos here: http://www.delicious.com/sjgknight/relationships+sexual.selection+video

I like to split the students into groups of about 3, each with a laptop and ask them to watch 1 or 2 videos each.  The question prompts here could be used alongside these.  The session could also involve reading a selection of articles, either provided for students or of their choice from the original sexual selection bookmarks.

Students could be encouraged to think about how these bits of evidence fit into the relationships scheme of work by using an essay grid and placing each bit in it.

This will hopefully be the first in a series of posts of this nature so feedback – even if it’s to say ‘don’t bother’ would be much appreciated so I can keep my posts as useful as possible.  I’d like to use combinations of people’s resources in the future so I’ll keep an eye out for ways I can do this, but if you have an idea then contact me via psychexchange.  My aim is to write a few posts which ‘bundle’ media & psychexchange resources for a full lesson or set of lesson ideas.

If you want to use delicious there are a couple of ways – simply using my & other people’s bookmarks, or by creating your own account.  If you take the latter option, you can tailor bookmarks to your classess/interests, and also join my network – providing a ‘searchable’ network of bookmarks including mine and yours.  This also allows you to link with other subjects as MrESpiers – a sociology teacher – and I have done.  My (small) network is here.  We also both tweet, sjgknight and MrESpiers.

The movie was made using the opensource CamStudio and (also opensource) Virtual Magnifying Glass with editing in Windows Live Moviemaker.

PsychClips is a great new web site for psychology teachers to share video and audio clips that are hosted on youtube-type sites.

There are already almost 100 video clips on PsychClips and with other psychology teachers help this should grow considerably. Some of the videos are the better-known ones such as the Milgram and Zimbardo clips but there are already some lesser-known ones that psychology teachers may not have seen before embedded on the site.

The site is free although you do have to register. Teachers who have already registered for PsychExchange can use their existing user name and password to access PsychClips.

Possibly the best feature of PsychClips is the book-marking facility. Teachers can add clips to their own profile so that they have instant access to these psychology clips when they log on. This is so useful for teachers who have access to networked interactive white-boards in their classroom – like me.

For a list of youtube-type video sharing sites check out yube.co.uk

Jamie is giving away a free copy of the newish Banyard and Grayson book to celebrate psychblog.co.uk being a year old. (I refuse to call it a Birthday though Jamie) To have a chance of winning this excellent book all you have to do is go over to his site and register.