Essentials Online: GCSE Science

overview

Essentials Online: GCSE Science is a revision tool specific to the AQA and OCR Gateway Specifications for Core, Additional and Separate Sciences. Essentials Online is a powerful learning tool that provides revision, practice and test questions with instant help and feedback. Covering every topic on both the AQA and OCR Gateway GCSE Science specifications, students can use Essentials Online to set up personalised revision or test sessions deciding which subject, unit and level they want to revise. Motivational avatars guide them through their revision sessions and question help material is available if required. A timer is also available and the question help can be switched off if they want to test themselves under exam conditions. Instant marks, detailed feedback and recommended revision topics and material are provided at the end of every session. Essentials Online is available as a download that installs easily onto a school intranet or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

It is possible to use Essentials Online both as a whole class tool on an interactive white board with pupils discussing questions and answers or as an individual tool for tailored revision in a computer suite.

The program was trialled with different levels of pupils from high achieving Year 11 separate science groups, through a mixed ability (D to A*) core and additional science group to a low ability (Grade G to D) core science group. The reaction from all pupils was positive, with only the low ability group making any less than positive comments and that was only to make the revision sections more interactive.

Downloading the software was quick and easy although it did require an additional tweak with help from the publishers to get it fully operational. Contact with the publishers was handled brilliantly and problems were resolved very quickly and easily.

Pupil reactions from all the groups were very positive with pupils finding the software very straightforward to use. The use of avatars as a help tool was very positively received, particularly with the low ability group as they were quietly and easily able to get help when struggling with a question.

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