Revision for the ITGS mock exams should be under way now, and very soon the final IB exams will be upon us too. Active revision is much better than staring at notebooks for long periods of time, so here are a few revision resources and activities that can be tried in the ITGS classroom. Most of them also make good lesson starters for use throughout the two year course.
If you have any other ideas for ITGS games or revision strategies, please do share them in the comments for this post.
Taboo
Played in teams, Taboo (also known as Forbidden Words) requires students to describe a word to their teammates without mentioning any of the ‘taboo’ words. Miming, ‘sounds like’, and ‘first letter is’ style answers are also out (students have a habit of developing new workarounds it seems!). The team has a minute to guess as many words as possible. This is a really good game for improving student vocabulary and helping them develop definitions of key ITGS terms in their own words.At the moment I have created cards for the topics Hardware, Software, Networks, Security, and Digital Media. They look quite nice when printed on coloured card and laminated. You can also download the blank cards to develop your own (if you do, I’d be grateful if you could share them with me).
Revision Flashcards
Flashcards are very useful for revising ITGS key terms. Quizlet is one of the better flashcard sites. It offers a number of different ways to learn, including various games and the option to see either the key term or the definition.
I have created a complete set of ITGS flashcards covering all of the terms in the syllabus plus a few additional ones. They are divided by topic, with hundreds of terms included.
Keyword Bingo
The concept is simple: each student is given a card with a variety of ITGS key terms on it (each card has a different subset of terms). The teacher reads out the definition of one of the terms, but does not say which term it is. If students believe they have the key word that matches the term, they cross it off. The first student to cross off all terms (correctly) wins.
You can download card and clue sets for the following ITGS topics: Hardware and Software (student cards, teacher’s clues); Networks (cards, clues); Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Expert Systems (cards, clues); databases (cards, clues); Models and Simulations (cards, clues), and Business and Employment (cards, clues).
Crosswords
Crosswords are another useful lesson starter tool for checking understanding of vocabulary and key terms (getting students to construct their own crossword is also a very powerful technique). I like HotPotatoes as a crossword generator – true, it’s output can be a little bit ugly, but it has a lot of features and can export interactive quizzes to HTML as well as to PDF for printing.
Here are some online ITGS crosswords for the hardware and software topics. My textbook website has these available as PDFs on the appropriate chapter page.
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