Online Revision tools for Teachers and Students

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.

Get Revising Study Planner – a useful online study planner – easy to set up (see video below)

Mind Mapping Tools:

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.

Flashcards to Go – online study tool (cross devices)

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)

GoFormative – online student response system

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.

Padlet and Padlet Backpack for Schools

Padlet enables communication and collaboration between multiple computers and devices and therefore facilitates collaboration within the classroom and between staff and students. Essentially it is an online collaborative bulletin board but it has great potential for use as an educational tool; open ended questions can be posted to ellicit discussion and debate through student responses or collaborative research can be undertaken with findings shared in one area.

I have just started trying padlet with classes for homework activities. For example one of my Year 9 groups have been asked to each research a particular volcano and they will then share the results of their findings on the padlet wall shown here to build up a collaborate resource showing some of the worlds major volcanoes.

The uses of Padlet in the classroom are widely documented and the two videos below give useful overviews of the educational potential of this tool.

Padlet Backpack for Schools

The new Padlet premium version for schools looks like a great tool – Padlet Backpack for schools gives a greater degree of privacy and has no social media features. Teachers can create student accounts and have complete control over them with regards to what they can can’t do. Student accounts don’t require an email. You can your own school logo and either use your own domain or get your very own subdomain. As it is on its own domain the school IT department can block access to the open padlet.com whilst maintaining access in school to your Padlet Backpack version. Features on their way soon also include integration with LMS, Google apps and Edmodo to enable login without setting another password and content filtering. A 30 day free trial is available. Further details can be found here.

Padlet have created a number of video tutorials to support the use of Padlet Backpack School, including…

How to signup and log in to your Padlet Backpack School

How to import your padlets into your Backpack account

Adding your school’s logo to your Backpack account