Revision Box Blog

Exam Revision Crunch

cian — Sun, 20 May 2012 12:03:41 +0000

That time of the year is rolling around again! GCSE revision is getting into full swing and to help RevisionBox is making our GCSE Maths Course free to use for RevisionBox users. Revise any topic on the GCSE course in your own time, at home and for free!!! Best of luck to everyone in their revision!!!!

New School Year

cian — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:06:52 +0000

Welcome to all our new students using RevisionBox for the first time....and welcome back to those returning students who have just purchased repeat subscriptions!

Check out our new GCSE Maths Revision videos

Best of luck to everyone in the coming acedemic year.

Good Luck in GCSE Maths

cian — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:51:35 +0000

Best of luck to all our students in GCSE Maths tomorrow! I'm sure there will be loads of A Stars!

How to deal with a tough exam

cian — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:18:47 +0000

Lots of students found the GCSE Biology exam today pretty tough going. For many it was their first experience of an exam going badly. One thing we know for sure is that it wouldn't be their last bad exam and learning to deal with it is a really important part of exam technique.

Here is a three step process that one of our teachers uses with his classes.

1) Forget about it. It's very difficult to know during an exam how well or badly it went. It's human nature to try and go over it in your head afterwards, but it doesn't help you. As soon as you possibly can, forget about it.

2) Take a break. It's important during exams to take a break. Exams take a lot out of you, and much as you might like to, it's not always possible to come from one exam and start studying for the next one. When you feel an exam has gone, it's even more important to take a break. Going for a walk is a great way to clear your head, no one gets enough fresh air during exam time!!!

3) Focus on the next exam. Nothing takes your mind off the last exam like getting ready for the next one. Once you have cleared your head, dive into the revision for the next exam!

Best of luck to everyone in the upcoming exams.

PS. Over the next few weeks we will be doing a series of blog posts on exam technique for the maths exams.

One exam down!!!

cian — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:29:14 +0000

Lot's of first exams for people today. We hope that they went well for everyone. Unfortunately no time to put the feet up just yet, lots more exams coming up soon.

The first one is always the hardest though, so well done in getting it over with!!!

5 and a half GCSE Revision hints and tips

cian — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:38:47 +0000

In these last few frantic weeks before the GCSE exams we thought it would be helpful to put together a top 10 hints and tips for revision from our teachers!!!

We hope they help you...

1) Make a plan. Work out exactly what you need to know for the exam, and how long you have to revise everything. Know what you need to learn everyday. Do your best to stick to the plan.

2) Begin with the key principals of each topic. Especially in Maths, you need a solid base of knowledge within each topic before moving onto something more advanced.

3) If you find you are stuck on the particular problem try and break it down into smaller problems. If that doesn't work, take a break from it and come back to it later. Don't spend hours on it, a fresh perspective can be really helpful.

4) Past papers are essential. There is no substitute for trying real exam questions. As you get closer to the exam, try answering the questions in the alloted time you will have in the exam.

5) Find the study style that suits you best. Some people revise best by themselves, others find group study works well for them. If you work better with other people, set up a study group.

5 and a half) And of course, if you need some help - don't forget RevisionBox!!!

Best of luck with the studying!

Next generation revision - and at introductory prices!!!

cian — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:59:02 +0000

We have been somewhat behind in our blogging recently, but the good news is that RevisionBox is now up and running and available for students.

We have a full GCSE Maths course (25 hours, 6 sections, 41 sub sections and 150 lessons - if it's on the GCSE Maths syllabus, it's in our revision course) complete with example questions and solutions and opportunities to test your own understanding of the topics. We also have revision courses in GCSE English for those students studying "Of Mice and Men" or "Mister Pip" including overviews of the texts, important characters and plot themes.

We are still building up our content base (interactive testing will be coming shortly) and until May we are offering introductory prices on all courses (English courses start from as little as £8.99 while access to the Maths course until the end of the acedemic year is available for just £29.99).

Please use the "Contact us" button on the bottom right of our web pages, or e-mail info@RevisionBox.net with any feedback you have.

A slight change of direction

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:45:00 +0000

Things have been moving ahead quickly recently within RevisionBox – however we have made a change to our launch product and postponed our launch until we have the change completed.

We decided that we need one full GCSE course to launch with, and we have chosen GSCE Maths. We had previously planed to launch individual topics within GCSE Maths. We have spent the last few weeks filming again, and the entire course is now in post production. It’s going to take a few weeks to get all the editing done, graphics overlayed etc but when it’s finished we will have the GSCE maths course entirely finished and ready for students!

We will also be launching revision courses for two GCSE English Novels, ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck and ‘Mister Pip’ by Lloyd Jones. Given the lack of revision books available for ‘Mister Pip’ we are hoping this course will prove especially popular with students taking this novel.

Post Production – more work than you might imagine…

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 09:42:00 +0000

From answers.com: Post production: A final stage in the production of a film or a television program, occurring after the action has been filmed or videotaped and typically involving editing and the addition of soundtracks.

For RevisionBox post production includes editing, adding graphics, adding sounds where appropriate etc. For the record, it can be surprisingly difficult to get hexagons, dice and triangles to look just right on a video!!! The whole process is extremely time consuming, especially for the initial episodes of each course. It is, however, a necessary ingredient in producing high quality video lessons.

Thankfully we are nearing the end of post production and gearing up for launch. We are in the process of finalising dates for launch and will post them here as soon as possible.

“Cut, that’s a wrap people” – Filming video lessons

admin — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:08:00 +0000

RevisionBox has just completed filming out first video courses. These courses will form our beta launch offering (more on that in a later post) to be launched early in 2011. You can view pictures from the set here.

All in all it was a very tough and intense (as I’m sure many of partner teachers will agree with) couple of months but extremely productive. We now have top quality content (which is now in editing and post production) that will, I hope, provide a really compelling beta offering. I want to use this post to relay some of the lessons we learned.

There are three things that the success or failure of our filming week depended on, preparation, quality people and contingency planning.

Preparation

Recording top quality lessons in front of a camera is not easy. A lot of things need to come together to make it work. Firstly extensive preparation needs to have been done on the lessons, so that the teacher is happy with the script and accompanying slides. Secondly all the logistics have to fall into place to allow filming to take place smoothly; sets need to be prepared, equipment rented and crews assembled. Even minor points like keeping people fed and watered while on set require a great deal of preparation. Trust me when I say, you can not prepare too much.

Quality people

It’s not an exaggeration to say we simply wouldn’t have content now if we hadn’t managed to get such high quality people on board. From our Partner Teachers (who continually exceeded our expectations – thanks guys) to our cameraman Niall (who despite completely unreasonable requests such as working until 2 and 3am never complained) everybody was a star (although only some appeared on camera!). It doesn’t matter how much effort it takes, finding the right people is always worth it.

Contingency plans

One of the courses we filmed was ‘Of Mice and Men’, and we had more than our fair of ‘best laid plans’ going awry. We had everything from legal hold ups preventing us getting access to our offices and therefore having to re locate our set, to light bulbs blowing at the worth possible moments. Murphy’s law always seemed to apply – if it could happen, it did. We just about managed with the contingency plans we had, but going forward we will definitely be taking a more ‘plan for the worst to happen’ approach.

Finally, somewhat related to all of these is the importance of hard work. It’s easy to cut corners, not do the final shoot, leave the error on the slide (I’m sure there are still some there) but when you are trying to produce something that’s genuinely top quality, unfortunately there is no substitute for hard work!