When you leave school, you may think that you have seen the last of exam season stresses. However, this isn’t always the case. The majority of people go through it all again when they have children of their own, helping them with revision, learning the syllabus and waiting anxiously for those all important results. In fact, the only thing worse than sitting exams yourself is your child sitting their exams – after all, you only want the best for them, as does any parent. One of the advantages, however, that your children may have over you, is the use of technology to help them learn. When you were at school the handiest gadget, you may have come across could have been the humble calculator. These days, kids have access to a whole digital world from which to learn, and lots of interesting pieces of kit that claim to help improve their performance. Take advantage of this and invest in some technology that can give them the best chance possible of acing those exams; here are a few examples of what you might be interested in.
Productivity apps
As much as we have just praised technology for all the ways it can help our kids learn, it can also sometimes do the complete opposite. Technology-based procrastination is a real issue for many teenagers and children who are trying to study, as sometimes the temptation to check Facebook just one more time can be overwhelming. That’s why numerous productivity apps have been invented to help students spend less time procrastinating and more time working. Some of these come in the format of organizational apps such as Trello, whereas others temporarily block social media sites for the duration of the study period.
Desktop software
You wouldn’t write an essay on an old, scrunched up piece of paper, with a pen that barely works. Much in the same way, you wouldn’t expect your child to complete a piece of work on outdated desktop software. Whether you are a family who uses PCs or Macs, you need to make sure you have the basic functions installed, such as Word and presentation documents. If you don’t have these already, you can access them from websites such as M Suite. You may also want to consider getting hold of some slightly more advanced software, depending on what projects your child is working on. Film, publishing and photo editing software can all come in useful if your child is working on a creative project.
Sharing tools
One thing that can make your child’s life a lot easier during exam season is the ability for them to study wherever they may be. For the most part, downtime during the examination period does go out the window somewhat, so any chance to study should be grabbed with both hands. By using file sharing software such as Dropbox, your child can access their study documents from their phone or tablet as well as from their laptop, which makes studying on the go a whole lot easier.