Welcome to the ICT across the Curriculum blog which is designed to support staff and build confidence in the use of ICT in teaching and learning in the 21st century classroom. To find out more, including links to some excellent sites on the use of ICT in education, see the About section.
I’ve recently come across Edynco which I’m hoping to try out over the next couple of weeks. I think this could have really good potential for helping students with revision and linking concepts and key ideas to support recall. Edynco enables simple mind-maps to be turned into interactive learning maps with the addition of other resources and links such as attached documents, audio, video etc.
Formative is an online student response system / online formative assessment tool which is made by teachers from across the US and is free for teachers and students. The tool enables a range of responses including multiple choice, numeric, text, drawing and taking pictures. Assessments are shared with students via a quick link or access code and student responses are sent to the teacher in realtime so that early intervention and tracking of student responses can be undertaken.
This video provides a useful overview of the tool.
There is also a useful tutorial video which shows you how to upload and convert a .pdf into a digital formative assessment. This video helps to show you the potential of the tool for setting online assessments as homework or classwork. As student work is completed it can be monitored in realtime.
I really like the potential of this and hope to give it a go with one of my exam classes over the next term. Have any of you had any experience of this already or have any ideas to share?
With the revision season already underway and set to become particularly busy over the next few weeks I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the most useful online revision tools / apps available for both staff and students. Anymore you can recommend? Please let me know and I’ll add them to the list!
Revision Organisation
Revision Ace – a useful app for organising revision schedules, setting revision reminders and revision targets
PocketMod – create a pocket size revision planner – templates include monthly and weekly calendars and a task list really useful for revision.
RevisionWorld – a tool for creating and printing revision schedule as well as lots of revision resources for students.
Mindomo – useful tool for both students and staff. Teachers can use this to produce mind maps to simplify / summarise more complex information – for example helping students to break down an exam specification into the various component parts to facilitate revision. You can create 3 maps for free with the free account but beyond that this is a paid resource with a pricing structure for education.
Xmind – a free download (open source) although a paid for pro version is available – a good mind mapping tool and results can also be saved to Evernote making access across devices easier.
Coggle– easily produce mindmaps to simply and present more complex information – can be shared with others.
Online Revision Tools:
Flashcards++ (app) – an app for iOS to help memorise from flash cards – you can create own flashcards and share with others. You can listen to cards (text to speech) or record your own audio.
Examtime (free) – has an excellent set of tools to support revision and studying, including tools for mind-mapping, flashcards, quizzes notes etc. There are also useful notes and resources on study tips.
Getrevising.co.uk – free learning tool for staff and students. Create own study quizzes and flashcards – can be created by students and teachers and classes can be set up to share these with others. Can be used on iphones / iPads and android.
Memrise– useful tool for learning vocabulary (takes some setting up).
Tools for quick formative assessment during revision in class:
Socrative – quickly assess through realtime questioning with the use of smartphones, tablets, laptops etc.
QuickKey App – the fantastic Quickkey App can be used to quickly assess students. Teachers can use smartphones / iPads to scan answers and quickly assess students and identify correct and incorrect answers (see previous post on QuickKey app). I already use QuickKey on a regular basis for Year 10 and 11 to do quick formative assessments as part of each unit (to complement other assessment skills)
Creating Revision materials for use in the classroom:
IWB – SMART Notebook – the only limit to this one is imagination! There are a number of inbuilt activities for creating interactive revision quizzes etc. for the IWB, including the Lesson Activity Toolkit. Many of these are ready created activities which can simply be edited. The activity builder allows you to be more flexible in creating your own resources. Simple drag and drop can be created easily and other tools on the IWB provide opportunities for interrogating exam questions / modelling answers as a whole class. Using SMART notebook is also particularly useful for structuring revision session as you can use the paperclip function to organise all resources associated with the lesson together (e.g. word documents, powerpoints, audio and video clips etc..) – in the newer versions of SMART notebook you can even integrate weblinks directly into the pages to use with students as part of a presentation.
PowerPoint – great for creating summary presentations for revision and you can easily integrate hyperlinks to other resources or even hyperlink between pages to create question and answer quizzes for whole class use on the IWB. There are various templates for such quizzes available on the web.
Contentgenerator – create useful e-learning quizzes with no knowledge of coding required – simply input the questions. Students love these and they work very well on the IWB as well as being easily integrated in blogs and websites for students to use in revision. Pricing structure is available on the website.
Classtools.net – lots of great tools for creating free quizzes and activities (well worth exploring – great for use on the IWB or again can be integrated into blogs).
Explain Everything– Great app for the iPad – many uses – but when it comes to revision it is great for projecting student answers on the board (e.g. using AirServer or Apple TV) and doing peer / whole class assessment to look at the development of exam technique / allocation of marks.
The excellent padagogy wheel v4. poster by Allan Carrington is a must for teachers interested in the use of iPads. Fundamentally, it’s creation looked at how pedagogy can drive the technology and not the other way. The most recent version, published this month, has links to 122 of the latest and most popular educational apps.
The poster itself has a number of direct links to other supporting online resources. It is ideal for printing and sharing with colleagues in schools and colleges. The wheel helps to clearly show the links between apps, learning objectives, cognitive development actions etc. and has great potential for use in the creation of learning courses making best use of iPads – essential for any school looking at the truly effective integration of iPads in learning.
There is a very useful audio presentation here published by Allan Carrington which looks not only at the development of the padagogy wheel concept but also how it can be used.
Further links to Allan’s work and the Padagogy Wheel include:
A quick and easy to use free tool for converting .pdf documents to word is available from investintech.com. This useful, free tool is online based and enables you to convert scanned .pdf documents to editable word documents. Simply browse for the .pdf file you wish to convert, insert your email address and click convert. Once the conversion has been completed a download link will be sent to your email address. When I tried it it worked perfectly but there was a 30 minute period before the conversion download link was emailed.
Whilst the free version has the inevitable wait time, there is also a paid version available which allows direct conversion from your desktop Able2Extract PDF Converter 9 allowing conversion to 10 different editable file formats (including Excel, PowerPoint etc.).
Click here to access and search a large archive of some of the best links supporting the use of ICT across curriculum subjects. To suggest a link to be added, please email me.
I’ve recently come across Edynco which I’m hoping to try out over the next couple of weeks. I think this could have really good potential for helping students with revision and linking concepts and key ideas to support recall. Edynco enables simple mind-maps to be turned into interactive learning maps with the addition of other resources and links such as attached documents, audio, video etc.
ICT Across the Curriculum 