When you begin writing, it is important to prepare to write. To do this, many students are taught mind mapping or brainstorming activities, which help focus thought and bring out what you know about a topic or subject.
What is a mind map? A mind map is a visual way of organizing thoughts and ideas, which help students develop ideas for writing; all of the ideas developed are extended from a core idea or theme. This is usually done with paper and pen; however, there is a third-party module available in Moodle that will allow your students to create theirs in the course and allow it to be visible to other course members.
Another technique used is brainstorming. This is usually done in groups with the object of helping develop ideas for some type of project or assignment. Since we will be looking at collaboration between two or more students, in Moodle, one way to ease this process along is using the Wiki module, which allows multiple users to edit a document.
We will first take a...