Online revision help hard to find but worth the effort

By CHRIS BARTON

Ben jumped out of the window and headed down the garden path.

"Where the hell do you think you're going," I bellowed from the deck.

"Taking a break," Ben replied innocently.

It was then I realised he wasn't going to pass School Certificate biology. The carefully worked-out study plan wasn't going to work; children have the most uncanny ways of disrupting your expectations.

That was about eight years ago. Ben did fail bio but passed everything else and, much to our surprise, went on to university and got a BA.

We still look back on that School C year and wonder how we survived. Getting a teenager to swot when he doesn't want to, doesn't know how to and doesn't particularly care, is an ugly business. Especially when you have ignored expert advice and decided you can't just sit back and let him learn the hard way by failing.

The net wasn't really around then. But with School C and Bursary exams starting next week, I wondered whether it would have made a difference.

At www.stemax.co.nz I found StudyBuddy - an interactive revision and learning CD-Rom written for the New Zealand Curriculum. I have looked at this product before and found it an excellent study aid. The site also has mock exam papers that can be bought ($5-$7 per paper) and downloaded online.

It also had some useful tips on how to study: "The best way to study for maximum retention is called 'spaced studying'." This is when you study a little bit at a time, over the whole semester." Just the sort of advice Ben ignored, opting instead for the not recommended "mass studying" (aka cramming) - what you do "when you frantically read the stuff for the first time right before the exam."

Just before this went to press I also got an e-mail from the Supernova tutor bureau telling me about their "unique" online classroom at www.homeworktutor.co.nz. The "Backchat!" portion of the site promises live tuition online with one of the company's tutors. It hasn't set the price for this service yet, so for the startup period, it's offering "free access to the classrooms."

But mostly, my searches for online swot assistance were frustrating. Not because the material isn't there, but because there's too much and it's hard to judge its relevance for New Zealand.

Sites such as www.ed.gov/free/kids.html or www.nytimes.com/learning/general/navigator/students.html are good examples - rich with information but daunting in scale.

I didn't fare much better at Te Kete Ipurangi - The Online Learning Centre - at www.tki.org.nz/e/tki run by the New Zealand Ministry of Education.

David Copeland, chairman of the Learning Centre Trust, which is building the education portal, explained that while much of the mechanism was now in place, the portal was just beginning to build its content. "Watch this space, the process is accelerating."

Which isn't particularly comforting for those swotting right now. Mark Treadwell - an expert at sifting educational content on the net - said online exam revision was not at present very common in New Zealand. But it was starting to happen.

Schools such as Riccarton College in Christchurch and Pakuranga College in Auckland now let students access the school intranet by dialling in from home. There they can get access to course work and, in some cases, revision material.

Mr Treadwell said some subjects, such as mathematics and science, are more suited to online revision than others. He suggested www.scholarnet.co.nz as a good example - although he argued that the site "does not win high marks in encouraging thinking, the skill students really need for the 21st century."

Mr Treadwell also recommended www.nzmaths.co.nz - although it is not designed specifically for exam revision.

He pointed out that curriculums around the world "tend to be fairly generic in theme although specific in context." Which is why many overseas exam revision sites were useful, but only if students knew what they needed to know.

Because our curriculum draws heavily from Britain, sites such as www.samlearning.co.uk are likely to be more useful than United States sites such as www.softseek.com/Education_and_Science.

But it was at the latter that I found the New Zealand-based www.funmaths.com/games.htm and its great Funmaths Game Station - a set of arcade-style games that challenge students to think about maths while playing computer games. I know Ben would have liked that.

So what else? Mr Treadwell said http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz, as well as providing English resources for teachers, had some that students could tap into for revision. Search for "exam."

There are also some exam revision resources available for chemistry students at www.chemistry.co.nz. The New Zealand Council for Education Research has an excellent collection of "resource banks" of questions that have been developed by teachers, for teachers. The questions are specifically tailored to the New Zealand prescription and show the style of question being asked as well as the specific objective being questioned.

I couldn't find much in New Zealand for language revision, although there is an enormous resource at the students' section of www.bigchalk.com. I also thought interactive chat or e-mail with the help of the online translator at www.epals.com wouldn't be a bad way to brush up on French or German.

My overall impression is that web-savvy students could get quite a lot of swotting help from the net, but only if they know what to look for. Normally that's where a teacher would help. Unfortunately, far too many of them still don't know where to begin with this teaching tool.

Links:

www.stemax.co.nz

www.homeworktutor.co.nz

www.ed.gov/free/kids.html

www.nytimes.com/learning

www.tki.org.nz/e/tki

Mark Treadwell

www.scholarnet.co.nz

www.nzmaths.co.nz

www.samlearning.co.uk

www.softseek.com

www.funmaths.com

http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz

www.chemistry.co.nz

NZ Council for Education Research

www.bigchalk.com

www.epals.com