We use various web pages and applications a lot in the Film department, and it's a good idea to get these set up right at the start of the course.

1. BROWSER - We recommend Firefox. Apart from being faster and more 'customisable' than Safari or IE, it works MUCH better with the Web 2 apps we use. Without it, you will struggle to edit this website, for example.

2. BLOG - We want you to actually engage with the films you watch in and out of school. The best way to do this is to form your own thoughts by keeping a written record of what you've seen and what you thought of it. On our Ning forum, you will have a blog facility once you sign up. Here's an example to show what current students are doing...

Incidentally, when you join these sites, join properly! That is, use a recogniseable name (we currently have dozens of 'crazychicks' and we can't tell them apart...) and upload a photo. Make a note of your login or allow your browser to remember it.

3. WIKI PAGE - We use this site - URL is sismedia.wetpaint.com - for everything else. Have a look around and you'll see that there is a lot here. We will expect you to contribute in a number of ways, so you need to set up an account. You will have your own page, used to organise your Independent study, Extended Essay (if it's in film) and your Practical. This allows us to keep track of what you're up to! Again, an example...

4. ONLINE ANNOTATION - Both Mr Ryan and (especially) Mr Williamson spend more time online than is strictly good for them. We tend to find a lot of film-related stuff, and diigo allows us to annotate it. If you sign up, you can access those articles and the annotations (and, of course, annotate the internet yourself.) Very useful, though it can take a little while to understand. Make Mr W your first friend!

5. HOMEPAGE and RSS. Hunting around for various film-related materials can be time-consuming, so we use rss to organise it all in one place. Netvibes gives you that one place. The school page is here. It allows you to collect all relevant modules (this site, school email, rss feeds, online radio, ridiculous games, MSN and your granny's facebook page and so on) in one place and, again, it allows us to share ideas. Usefully, you can also have a private and a public page. Netvibes would make a much better homepage than lolcats or whatever you're using now! Here's my public page to give you an idea of what it does...