So that all learners (students and teachers) can have a personal online workspace, we’ve set up a personal learning environment known as “elgg.” We call our version of it the MyPlace Community.

Although having your own Blog is part of what the community offers, you can also use if as your online workspace to:

1. Use RRS feeds (what are these?)
2. Tag your interests (why do this?)
3. Upload files (documents to share, images and audio files to podcast).
4. Connect with others who share your interests.

So the MyPlace Community is a lot like social networking sites like MySpace and LiveJournal. You can see an example page. This will give you an idea what a personal page looks like.

You can use your MyPlace Community page like an online portfolio as you participate in the MyPlace Project.

By August, this site is likely to have over 500 students and teachers in it.

How to Register

1. Go to the MyPlace Community
2. Click on “register” (mid way down the right side of the Web page).
3. Fill in your name and email address (one you can check right away) and click on the “register” button.
4. Check your email (it might take a few minutes) and look for the invitation to join. It will have the subject: “MyPlace - Community account verification.”
5. Click on the link in the email (or copy and paste it into a Web browser’s address line).
6. This will take you to a page where you can change your detail and create your password (at least 6 characters long).
7. Tick the “I am at least 10 years of age” box and then click “Join.”
8. Log-in with your username and password.

What to do once you’re logged-in

There are few things you might do now, one is to take a look around and to have a play.

Some suggestions

RSS Feeds - The main benefit of using this might be the RSS feeds. Some Feeds are already subscribed and appear as “Popular Feeds”. If you see a feed that is on one of your interests, view the feed. If you think it will be a good resource, click on the “subscribe” link.

Complete your Profile - Enter as much or as little information as you like about yourself. The more details you put in, the more likely it is that the elgg software will be able to match your interests with others in the community. Note: Let’s please keep the interests related to things in the MyPlace project (you can use other sites to post your favourite songs, movies, game cheats, etc.). You get to decide how public to make each field. We suggest most are kept to logged-in members.

Add your image - If you have access to a computer with a Web cam or a digitial camera and photo editing software, you can upload your picture. Notice that the size of the photo is very small.

Once all this is finished, you can start to really use the community to pursue your own personal learning. Welcome!