What2Learn

The High School exit exams for the State of New York are the Regents Exams. The class of 2000 were the first to take these exams which had replaced the Regents Competency Tests. Students will be tested on the following topics:

• English/language arts
• Math
• Science
• Global history and geography
• U.S. history and government

Please note that ‘Science’ includes Earth Science, Biology / Living Environment, Chemistry and Physics.

As with passing any test or exam, thorough preparation and planning is the key to success. As the old addage says, ‘if you fail to plan then you plan to fail’. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Make sure you know when the exams are and create a timetable of revision so that you don’t have to panic at the last minute. Check these dates with your teacher or click here to go to the NYS Education Department to check the Regents schedule.
• Look at past examination papers, click here for samples.
• Revise, revise, revise! Go through your books, form study groups, etc. Make revision fun by playing some of the hundreds of High School revision games available here at What2Learn. Click here to get a free account now.

Comments, suggestions and further tips on how to pass the NYS Regents Examinations are welcome below.

Fun interactive games to develop math skills. Sign-up is FREE and your students can soon be playing their way to success in Math. Not only do you get loads of free activities for students to play at school or at home, but all of their scores will be automatically recorded to enable you to monitor progress!

Engage your students! Save youself time!

Sign up NOW!

Topics covered include: Lots of mental math activities Times tables Addition Subtraction Multiplication Division Areas of shapes Dimensions of shapes Angles in triangles Volume of cuboids Volume of cylinders Decimal places Significant figures Fractions to decimals Decimals to fractions Decimals to percentages Percentages to decimals Calculations with negative numbers Percentages and fractions of money Scores as percentages

Play a sample game. The main system has more features than this sample game.

On top of all of the Math topics listed above, your students will be able to play learning games for many other subject areas including English, Science, French, Spanish and many more. What2Learn contains an innovative in-built reward system to encourage your students to keep learning for longer - by beating the learning games they will earn credits to design and develop an online character called a micon (shown below).

Sign up NOW!

Access FREE interactive revision games and exam drills for OCR 21st Century Science Unit P1: The Earth in the Universe. The topics covered within this include…

- The Universe
- Stars and galaxies
- Continental drift
- Plate tectonics
- Seafloor spreading
- Constructive and destructive margins
- Responding to earthquakes
- Hubble’s Law

What2Learn provides the fun way to prepare for exam success. Students learn through playing a range of interactive learning games, repeating games to build their knowledge. Their scores in the activities are automatically recorded to enable students, teachers and parents to monitor progress. Instant feedback will help them to really develop their knowledge.

You need to register for a FREE account to access these resources and hundreds more. Sign up takes less than a minute.

Try a sample revision game for P1: Earth in the Universe. Click HERE. 

For more details about how to sign up and the benfits please see our student or teacher pages. See our Science page for full details on the topics covered within the main What2Learn system.

You can even make your own revision games for P1: The Earth in the Universe by using the free learning game generator at www.what2learn.com/games. A webpage with your game will be instantly created, ready to be played. The game can even be embedded right into your own blog, school website or VLE!

Access FREE interactive revision games and exam drills for OCR 21st Century Science Unit B1: You and your genes. The topics covered within this include…

- Genes and chromosomes
- Genetic disorders, including Huntington’s disease, haemophilia and cystic fibrosis
- Gene therapy
- Stem cells

What2Learn provides the fun way to prepare for exam success. Students learn through playing a range of interactive learning games, repeating games to build their knowledge. Their scores in the activities are automatically recorded to enable students, teachers and parents to monitor progress. Instant feedback will help them to really develop their knowledge.

You need to register for a FREE account to access these resources and hundreds more. Sign up takes less than a minute.

Try a sample revision game for B1: You and Your Genes. Click HERE.

For more details about how to sign up and the benfits please see our student or teacher pages. See our Science page for full details on the topics covered within the main What2Learn system.

You can even make your own revision games for B1: You and Your Genes by using the free learning game generator at www.what2learn.com/games. A webpage with your game will be instantly created, ready to be played. The game can even be embedded right into your own blog, school website or VLE!

Boost traffic to your MySpace profile and increase friends requests. By making an interactive Flash game and adding it to your profile you will instantly make your page more interesting and attractive to visitors…

This can be done very quickly by following the following steps…

1. Go to www.what2learn.com/games and select the type of game you would like to make.

2. Follow the on-screen instructions to make your game.

3. Once you have made your game, look to the right of your game and you will see the ‘embed’ code. You need to copy this.

4. Log in to MySpace and select ‘Edit Profile’.

5. Paste your game ‘embed’ code into the profile section your would like the game to appear.

That is it! Easy! Your MySpace page and profile are immediatley more interactive and attractive to visitors. Watch the friend requests flood in.

What2Learn about boosting web traffic using StumbleUpon…

If you are looking for ways to boost traffic to your blog or website you will come across social bookmarking websites such as Stumbleupon, Delicious, Digg, etc. Are these worthwhile?

A social bookmarking website allows users to store bookmarks and to share these with others. By storing a bookmark to your own website you will enable others to find your site and push traffic towards it. At least, this is the theory!

As a test for the impact of this I have tried using StumbleUpon. This requires you to download a small plugin for your web browser and to create a StumbleUpon account. Once you have done this, you can ‘Stumble’ your own site, enabling others to find it and increasing traffic.

Has using StumbleUpon increased traffic? Yes, but not what should be seen as any kind of quality traffic. Stumbling your site will give you an immediate boost of traffic, but this only seems to last a day or so as the image taken from Goodle Analytics shows. This shows the traffic only being referred from StumbleUpon.

Not only is this traffic boost very temporary, but the bounce rate, time on site and number of pageviews per visit from your StumbleUpon visitors will also be likely to be poor in comparison to the rest of your visitors.

Conclusion:

Social bookmarking websites will boost traffic to your site, but this rise is likely to be only temporary and fairly low in quality. If you are keen and able to add new content to your site on a very regular basis and to keep submitting it to social bookmarking sites then you may get the kind of traffic you want. To the author of this article, this seems like a very labour-intensive and unsustainable means of boosting web traffic. Developing quality content, ensuring it is has been optimized for search engines, and seeking quality incoming links to it is a slower but much more sustainable means of boosting web traffic.

Does tutor time seem to last forever? Are you looking for fun, free learning games for your students to play?

Some of the games below can be played with whole classes. If your students have access to computers then they can also play these games individually.

You could even make your own fun, interactive quizzes to keep them busy and learning.

The games listed below are just a few examples. By getting free accounts to access all of What2Learn, students will have access to hundreds of interactive learning games and exam drills. See our flyer for details on the benefits of What2Learn.

Sudoku Soccer

Sudoku has been used for a long time in tutor sessions to develop numeracy and thinking skills. Now you can avoid the need to have printable games by using our interactive sudoku game. With the added dimension of being based on a football match (the faster you complete the puzzle the better your team will do), students will be enagaged for longer.

Sudoku Soccer can also be played as a two-player game to add an element of competition. Press here to play Sudoku Soccer now.

Cattle Collector

A great way for students with literacy difficulties to develop their abilities with sequencing letters and words into alphabetical order. They control a UFO as it must correctly arrange the correct sequence in order to gain enough power to abduct a cow!

Press here to play cattle collector now.

Underwater Mathematics

A fun and stimulating way to help students learn their times tables. They can select the tables they would like to work on and answer the questions in order or in a random order.

Press here to play Underwater Mathematics now.

Remember - the main What2learn system has FREE access to hundreds of interactive learning games and exam drills that will keep your students engaged, motivated and learning for hour after hour. This is being used in tutor time in many schools to help raise academic performance. Sign up for free accounts today.

Are you looking for free interactive resources to help with the teaching of Religious Education? What2Learn provides a huge number of learning games and exam drills all ready for your students to use.

Are you looking for RE printables and worksheets? These are coming soon. In the meantime, please try the following links for excellent free teaching resources all ready to print…

Most website owners need to drive as much traffic to their website as possible. There are many different ways to do this and they all vary in their effectiveness. One of the most common methods employed is through the development of reciprocal links.
A reciprocal link is when one website adds a link to another website on the promise of that website adding a link back. This means that visitors to either website may follow the links and end up visiting both sites.
An important additional benefit is that the more incoming links a website has, the better its chances of appearing higher up in the Google search results. This is perhaps simplifying it rather as it the importance (or ‘pagerank’) of the websites linking to your own site also plays a part.
Developing these reciprocal links is a very time consuming activity and generally requires you to write to lots and lots of websites. Try to make sure that the websites you request reciprocal links from are relevant to the topic of your own site. Be prepared to never hear back from most of those that you write to. There are a number of ‘link exchange’ websites on the net that allow you to contact other webmasters, but do not expect to find many websites listed which are particularly relevant or high in quality.
Despite this, getting lots of incoming links is essential to the long term health of your website.

Once you have designed your micon, you can get a free online virtual pet for it. Don’t be boring either - why not go for a penguin, lion, panda or something else unusual?

If you have not made your online character yet (your micon) you will need a What2Learn account. It is free quick and easy to create an account. Sign up here.

Try designing your micon using our sample game. Once you have an account you will be able to save your design and earn credits (through beating games) to buy clothes to dress your micon in and items for them to own.