MINDTAP: A new online studying tool allows students to study AP Environmental Science in more depth.
By Emily Hughes, Staff Editor
Poly’s Advanced Placement Environmental Science (APES) class, taught by teacher Jeffrey Jambretz, recently adopted a new learning tool called MindTap. MindTap, which was originally designed for college students to help with studying for tests, is now being incorporated into high schools in certain subject areas. In Poly’s case, the subject area is environmental science.
MindTap is both a website and an application, with both features offering a variety of tools intending to help students learn material to a greater degree. MindTap’s website contains different chapters of a class’s textbook that students can interact with; in each chapter students can highlight the information they find important, take digital notes or listen to a voice read the chapter aloud. The notes and highlights will then make their way into a digitalized study guide that students can use to memorize and learn the material they need the most, even by printing the pages out directly. The site even creates flashcards based off of the text and generates tests and quizzes to help students master the subject material.
Jambretz had been working with the district to get new books for his APES students because the old books were severely outdated, with inaccurate information about the world’s climate and population. The new books, which feature research from National Geographic and updated statistics, came with the MindTap App and website that students in APES are beginning to use. “There was a training [session] that was provided by the publishers — four hour’s worth of training — that I attended, and we spent three hours just on MindTap,” Jambretz noted. Jambretz then gave his opinion of MindTap, stating, “I’m a huge fan. It’s already improved some students test scores, and I’m waiting to see how it improves the rest of the classes as we go forward and expand in our usage of it.”
Students are in the process of trying the program on for size, and so far, opinions are mixed. Natalie Jones (12) has used MindTap in the past, thus she did not need to spend much time learning the ways of the website. “When I used MindTap before, it was for my math class, so it was a lot harder I would say. This one is more fun because I’m learning about environmental stuff — more concepts than formulas.” Jones then added, “I’m not fully sure [how I feel about it], because it’s new, but I am interested to see how it’s going to work. I think it could be a good thing.” Sophia Helfand (12) also commented on MindTap as well: “I think it’s a great program that can be really helpful for students, but it definitely needs to be mixed with in-class teaching and experiments.”
With worldwide technology becoming more and more advanced, students are now learning in revolutionary new ways. MindTap is just one of the new online learning devices available to students and teachers across the world, and at the rate we’re moving forward, it is likely that even more applications and devices will continue to change the way we learn.