GCSEPod

GCSEPod is essentially a website that contains a series of resources for presenting, in a short and digitally stimulating way, a vast range of concepts and information to help the learner revise or refresh across a number of subjects which closely correlate with a selection of exam boards. The means of deploying this software across a school or chain of Academies provides the administrators with an efficient and effective way of monitoring student progress. GCSEPod is not just the app but an extremely comprehensive gateway to an excellent array of useful learning and revision materials for a large variety of GCSE courses across exam boards which is kept current for the recent changes. 

Both the teacher and student create a login, which gives them access to the site through a selection of devices, iPhone, Android, laptop or desktop. The software draws data from the school MIS and provides daily, up to date, information of students in classes.  

The teacher Dashboard, which is best accessed from a desktop or laptop device for the website portal when administering and setting up assignments, provides a summary of the work in hand.

GCSEPod Features

Typically it provides access to the ‘My GCSEs’, ‘Assignments’ and ‘My Playlists’; further down the screen is the ‘Teacher Area’ and “Usage Summary’. 

The ‘My GCSEs’ section can be set up to list all the GCSE’s that the teacher teaches with the specific exam board, once set up the teacher can then view the ‘playlists’ for each section. For example if I was teaching AQA Biology the three units would be displayed and within each unit the number of chapters would be shown. So, for example, Unit 1 displays thirty-five chapters within the playlist. Viewing the playlist displays another intuitive menu list where the chapters can be viewed, relevant to the topics. Evolution, for example, has four chapters and contains four short introductory learning and revision videos. Each chapter/video is about five minutes in length. The chapters that the teacher finds relevant and useful can be starred and placed on a ‘My Favourites Playlist’ ready to be shared with students.

The ‘Teacher Area’ lets the user set up the correct exam boards for the teacher. The ‘Extras’ section is a user resource bank where teachers can add their own set of digital resources, typically, podcasts, quizzes or YouTube Videos, which can then be allocated to the teacher assignments. The ‘Groups’ section is where the teacher can view, edit and report on all users of the site and where they can create or manage their own groups of students.

The ‘Pods’ section of the main portal provides an extremely comprehensive selection of Pods per subject area, the intuitive menu system guides you to the relevant Pod quickly and from there a teacher can select the chapters within the pod to assign, via a playlist to the students.

The ‘Assignments’ section of the main portal provides the teacher with a very powerful resource. The menu system guides the teacher through the process of creating an assignment. Firstly the teacher sets up the assignment name with a short description, any particular instructions for the students, then a deadline date. The next step is to add the chapters that are relevant to the assignment, again an easy step through to the desired information. The next step creates the questions designed to test the students understanding, with a choice of both free text and multiple choice, the group is then assigned and the work is published. The assignment then appears in the student area ready for them to get going! The application also provides a very sophisticated reporting tool for the user to track progress of all or groups of students from the tests provided in the assignments created.

GCSEPod is an excellent tool for creating engaging teaching, learning and revision sessions for students, but that is not all, the company have provided some outstanding teacher and school wide analytic tools for tracking knowledge and understanding; what more could a teacher ask for? I would highly recommend this software for any busy school interested in saving time but not cutting corners, good value for money.

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GCSE Apps

You can download GCSEPod on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the GCSEPod app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.