These all in one solutions that try to help the student with both their organisation and engaging in revision activities
We know that the activities that really help students learn usually require significant effort and therefore can often be hard for the student to initiate. Getting students into good habits when you only see them intermittently can be difficult. Online tools and apps may help with raising student activation levels and keeping them motivated.
To help students get to grip with the whole business of revision several companies have developed what I am going to describe as ‘whole solutions’ which try and take children through a range of activities associated with the revision process. They start with creating a revision timetable, move on to making notes, quizzes and revision diagrams as well as discussing revision habits and giving general advice.
Let’s have a look at two of these now to see what they can offer so we can decide whether or not to recommend them to our students.
GoConqr
GoConqr (which was formerly Examtime) is a freemium web based tool with an accompanying mobile app. You can sign in using your school Google account which is a plus. The app can be used for viewing and revising study materials which have to be created using the GoConqr web interface. A quick explore reveals that this tool has a nice revision calendar interface and which unlike Get Revising doesn't try to schedule your revision sessions for you but instead let's you put them in manually. You have the option to print the resulting calendar off or add the revision times to your usual electronic calendar.
The ability to create different types of study resources very easily on a web based platform (i.e. no installing software) which are all stored together along with a fairly simple interface is GoConqr's main advantage. The disadvantage here is that the free version is limited to three subjects/20 resources. With the free account anything you make is public which I think is actually quite a good idea.
It has a section for teachers built in! Here's a two minute look at GoConqr.
Get Revising
http://getrevising.co.uk/ A freemium web based social learning platform which is part of The Student Room Group. It's website says:
Students plan their studies, use our tools to create resources to help them learn and then discuss and share resources with others. From revisions notes to quizzes, word searches, mindmaps and flash cards, however students learn, they can find others who learn in the same way.
Students can create private study groups to work with friends from home, build a revision timetable to help structure their time and even make a personalised textbook from their favourite Get Revising resources.
You need a free account to create your own revision planner and make your own resources. It charges £6.99 per month for full access which appears to mean being able to use (and vote on) other people's revision resources instead of just using your own. However you don't need to subscribe to create and use your own resources.
I think that the benefits to this tool are having everything in one place and giving students straightforward examples with guidance of types of activities that can help them to learn. For example typing up revision notes also gives you the option to make little tests for yourself from your text and allows you to add in your own images and then finally gives you the option to print everything off as a pdf. There are how-to videos for all of the activities to make it as easy as possible to get started using the software. This could be a good tool for students who don't know where to start revising or don't realise that revising needs to be an active process where you parse and process material.
Content is organised by subject, exam board and topic or you can just use the search tool to find specific material.
I can see that this could be very helpful for some students but I wonder if more able to students would quickly outgrow it although it appear university level students are using Get Revising so perhaps I am wrong!
Get Revising are offering free access to the subscription service for teachers so you can go and check out the content there for yourself.
Get Revising was a BETT awards finalist in 2010.