Getting started with What2Learn

By the end of this session you will have:

• Created your What2Learn account

• Designed your online character

• Started setting up your virtual farm

• Linked to your teacher

• Created a league with your friends

• Completed several learning games

What is What2Learn?

What2Learn is a website we use to help you to learn things and to help us to assess you.

The learning you will do is in the form of interactive games – by playing and replaying the games you will improve your knowledge and your scores.

You will enjoy a range of in-built rewards and be able to link to your friends.

When you first log in you will see a screen like this one. Your ‘micon’ is your online character you design to represent you. At first it will be an outline. Click on it to start designing your character.

Once you have designed what your character looks like you will be able to start buying things for it. To do this you will need to spend What2Learn credits. Different things cost different amounts of credits. Credits are earned by completing learning games.

Your current number of credits.

Whenever you have made changes to your micon that you are happy with you need to press the ‘save changes’ button.

The other thing you will want to set up is your virtual farm. Press on the ‘Farm’ link in the side menu to head over to your farm.

You have five different areas on your farm. You will need to carefully manage and develop each of them to make your farm as successful as possible…

Top Tips for setting up your farm

The first few purchases you make are really important – do not spend money on things that will not give you money back quickly.

Good things to do include:

Buy some hens

Plant a crop

Build a toilet on your campsite.

Everything on your farm takes time – chicks will grow into hens, crops will grow, etc. A new day on the farm is available every two hours.

This lets you go to different parts of your farm.

This tells you how much money and credits you have.

This lets you buy or sell animals and items or to do actions like plant a crop.

If you are happy with changes you have made you must save them.

You can carry out extra little treats on your farm with this button.

This gives you a status update for the part of the farm you are in, eg how fertile the soil is, how many eggs the hens have laid, etc.

Keep everything on your farm healthy and happy to raise this score and make your farm more successful

Task One: Create your account

Go to www.what2learn.com and click the sign up button.

Complete the sign up form…

Enter the same as your school username here.

Enter this email – *****************************

Give your real name!

Select the class that best suits you but leave the user type as ‘Student’.

Enter a password you will remember!

Tick this box and then press ‘register’

When your teacher tells you your account is working, log in and set up your micon character and your farm.

Task Two: Using the sharing page

The sharing page lets you connect to your teachers (so they can see your scores) and your friends so that you can compete in a league and see what each other have been up to.

Share codes also allow you to ‘unlock’ new games and activities. Also, the more people who enter your own share code, the more things features will be unlocked for you on your farm.

Press the ‘sharing’ button in theside bar.

This is your own unique share code.

This is where you enter other share codes

Important: Enter share code ******* first – this is your teacher’s share code. After that enter the share codes of your friends.

Task Three: Playing learning gamesPress on ‘Play’ on the side bar, select the subject you want

from the drop down box and press ‘Show’. For today, select ‘Mathematics’ and do the times tables games.