Students Use Online Tools to Hit the Books

For 21st century high school students, studying for school often involves more time staring at a computer screen than reading textbooks. At an informal chat with Scarsdale High School students and the Board of Education on Monday night January 9, students shared some of the latest web tools, resources and sites they now use to master their academic material. Fascinated by how much has changed in just the past few years, we wanted to share some of the latest developments in teens’ study habits with you.

For one, when assigned a group project, busy students no longer need to find time for a face-to-face group meeting. Instead, they create a facebook group page for the project and convene a time to meet online.

Through facebook , iChat, ooVoo or Skype , students can video chat with up to three other people at a time. All participants can see and hear one another, making it seem like everyone is together without actually having to go anywhere.

Google Docs are another great way to work with groups without having to meet up in person. Once a working document is posted on Google Docs, multiple people can edit the document simultaneously and each member of the group can see everyone else’s edits.

Another tool some students are using is Dropbox , which is a new way to save files in a secure environment. In the event your computer is lost, broken or stolen, if you use Dropbox, you’ll still have access to your documents. You can install Dropbox on your computer or download it as an app on your iPhone for free. Once installed, any file that you save to Dropbox will save to all of your devices. All the files you need are taken everywhere with you.

VoiceThread allows students to create presentations utilizing voice, text, audio files or video. They can then share a VoiceThread with their peers who can record themselves as well. This is a great alternative to a PowerPoint presentation and serves to animate student’s work.

Quizlet is an online tool to make flashcards and quizzes. As it can be overwhelming to learn large numbers of vocabulary words, whether in English or a foreign language, this site allows students to design their own flashcards and also provides Quizlet-created flashcards for the user to study. The site creates tests for students who can master information by taking customized tests online. Students can share their quizlets with others and they often post links to their quizlets on facebooks to share with classmates.

And turnitin.com has revolutionized the way students present their work to their teachers. Once an assignment is completed, students can now post their paper on turnitin.com rather than print out and provide a hard copy to their teacher. Teachers can assign deadlines for the assignments and if work is not completed by the indicated time and date it will not be accepted on the site. In addition to tracking submission dates and times, turnitin.com provides another important service. The site checks the work against all sources on the internet and looks for unoriginal work and proper citations. Each paper is scanned and given a score that indicates how much of the material has been appropriated from other sources. While the availability of the internet as a tool is astounding, it makes plagiarism a whole lot easier. With the click of a button, students can now find an entire essay on the book they have to read for class and turnitin guarantees that students write original material.

Better yet, most of these dynamic learning tools are free.

So if you look into your son or daughter’s room at night and find them chatting online, don’t assume it’s all fun. They may actually be hard at work.

If you use additional internet study resources, please share them in the comments section below: