One of the great reasons to use FunnelBrain is that it gives you the ability to collaborate online with your fellow students.  What do I mean by “collaborate”?  Well, “collaborate” simply means “to work together.”  On FunnelBrain, you can work together with your fellow students to create sets of review questions and answers for all of your classes.  In this post, I will discuss in some detail how to do this.  To make the discussion as concrete as possible, I will imagine that I am a student in a high school AP or Advanced Placement class (AP and Advanced Placement are trademarks of The College Board).

For those of you who are not familiar with AP courses, let me digress a moment to explain.  AP or Advanced Placement courses are high school courses in which students do college level work.  In order for a course to be called an “AP” or “Advanced Placement” course, the course must meet rigorous requirements established by the College Board.  The College Board’s AP Program current includes 37 courses in 20 subject areas.  Popular AP subjects include: World History, European History, U.S. History, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Physics, Calculus, English Language, English Literature, and many others.  A complete list, along with detailed course descriptions, can be found at the College Board website.

Now, let me return to the subject of online student collaboration on FunnelBrain.  Suppose that I am a student in a high school AP Physics class.  I want to get my AP Physics classmates to join me in creating a comprehensive set of AP Physics flashcards on FunnelBrain that will help us all prepare for the AP Physics examinations (there are actually three AP Physics courses, called AP Physics B, AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, and AP Physics C: Mechanics, but for my purposes I’m combining them into one topic).

One of the keys to successful collaboration on FunnelBrain is making sure that the purpose of the collaboration is clear.  In other words, I want it to be clear to my fellow students exactly what we are working together to create.  Now, how do I do that on FunnelBrain?

My first step is to create an AP Physics group on FunnelBrain.

FunnelBrain AP Physics Group

Once I am logged-in to FunnelBrain, from the FunnelBrain homepage I click on “Create” and then on “Create a Group.”  This takes me to a page where I can easily create a group.  I can give the group a title, a description and even a photo to let other users quickly see what the group is about.  To illustrate, I have already created an AP Physics group, and I have given it the following description:

“This group will create a comprehensive set of review questions for AP Physics (including Physics B and Physics C). One deck will be created for each major topic area typically covered in AP Physics courses. This group is for all students and teachers of AP Physics courses. (AP and Advanced Placement are trademarks of The College Board).”

This description will make it clear to anyone joining the group what this group hopes to accomplish.  I’ve also added a nice photo of Einstein so anyone can tell at a glance that this is a physics group.

FunnelBrain Create Flash Cards

If I want to make things really clear, I can set up some or all of the decks I want the group to create.  To create a deck, from the FunnelBrain homepage, just click “Create” and you are taken directly to the Create Deck screen.  You can give each deck you create a title, a subject (optional), and a “purpose.”  The “purpose” is also optional, but it is a good idea to fill it in.  In the purpose field, you can write a short paragraph summarizing the topic you want the deck to cover.  Be sure to add each deck you create to your group – this is a separate step you must take after you create the deck.  Now, the decks you’ve created can serve as a kind of subject outline for the group’s members.  To see an example of this, check out my AP Physics group.  You’ll see I’ve created 19 decks, one for each of the major subject areas of a typical AP Physics class.

My last step, of course, is to invite my classmates to go to  www.funnelbrain.com and join my group.