Experiences of Tassomai, Seneca - other online resources?

[GoldenNoodle]

Hi, Dd15 is Year 10 and in the middle of her end of year exams. She has some issues with concentration and finds it very hard to revise - she will never be someone who sits down and makes revision plans and flash cards. I am exploring other ways to help her absorb the information and had been thinking about signing her up for Tassomai for the sciences. However, she came home yesterday very excited because someone in learning support had shown her a site called Seneca which seems similar to Tassomai. You can use it for free or sign up for a 'premium' subscription which is a lot cheaper than Tassomai.

What do people think of these resources? Any experiences or suggestions?

We are also using Quizlet which seems particularly useful for leaning French vocabulary.

Seneca premium has been fantastic for my Dd. Used it for all 3 sciences. Because it is exam board specific and broken down into topic areas it gave her motivation when text books and re writing notes became tedious. She thought it was great and would happily spend hours on it. Although check back on results day!!
They do guarantee grade7-9 if you follow their course but again let’s see in August.
Planning to use it for A levels too.
Yes Quizlet good too.

My students have used Seneca, some have used premium and are really pleased with it

Thanks Arewedone and Greathat - that sounds encouraging. Dd loves the free version of Seneca so far. Tassomai looks good, but so expensive! We are already paying for a maths tutor and it's all beginning to add up.

DS (just finished GCSEs) used both Tassomai and Seneca (there was no premium service when DS started on Seneca). We did sign up for the premium when it came out, but DS said to me for DD (starting 3 year GCSEs next year) that he thinks the free version should be adequate. That said, he loved Seneca. His view was that they tested in different ways, and he appreciated having both, although if a choice would go for Seneca.

What he liked about Tassomai particularly was that it was very portable, and meant he could do little and often on buses, and use the transport downtime, it kind of kept things at the front of his mind, and even if he didn't do anything else, just keeping up with daily goals was valuable. He did most of his Tassomai on his phone. He seemed to use Seneca more for the harder study, using his desktop at home and said it was amazing for harder biology topics such as the eye in particular.
He had a few irritations with Tassomai, which I can probably list if you want but very often they started with "given that we pay for this ..." ie he might have been holding them to higher standards given the cost.
I think the upshot of it is that for serious exam revision during exam periods, when your DC are motivated to sit down and study, Seneca wins hands down. But as a tool for dealing with the GCSE year, and keeping going day after day and month after month, to avoid cramming, there is a lot of benefit in the drip-drip requirements of Tassomai.

Thanks Blinkom - that's very interesting. I have heard good things about Tassomai but one of the criticisms has been that the learning goals can be hard to keep up with. Did your ds ever find this?

I'm not sure that dd is a 'revise on the move' kind of girl more like revise at gunpoint.

Well one of his whinges was that they reduced the number of questions in the daily goals and the number of daily goals in a week part way through, and he didn't like that. Probably other DC were struggling to keep up, but I don't think he is very representative - he is more, very driven, very anxious, at risk of overworking and stressing too much than the other way around. I think it was something of a security blanket for him, actually, something he could tick off every day or second day. He sometimes missed the daily goals on Tassomai when he was working hard on Seneca, but mostly he pretty much kept up (except for the French, which we dropped part way through, as he never kept up with that - partly because, again one of his whinges, they didn't put the French questions in with the science, so he had to go manually making sure he did them). He would really have liked to have the control to increase the number of questions in the daily goals.

Bimkom - yes, it does sound like your ds is quite different from dd! Thanks for all the insight - I hope he does well in his GCSEs - it sounds like he deserves to.

I think I am going to sign up for the Premium Seneca for now, and see how it goes. Maybe add Tassomai after mocks next year if an extra boost is needed.

Do either of these do a 'guarantee a pass' level rather than 7-9?
With the best will in the world DD would never get a 7 (unless maybe we threw away her other subjects).

Teens- I think you maybe surprised with Seneca. I guess it depends on each child but it really did work v well because it is so targeted towards the exam that dc don’t waste time and revision becomes v well organised, plus it is very user friendly.

For those that have used Seneca - would it be worth signing up from the Premium at the start of Year 10?

Thanks @Soursprout

Dd used Tassomai last year for science and credits it with raising her grades from 6 to 7/8 (she had sonme poor science teaching in year 9/10 though that improved in year 11 with a retirement and new teacher, however there were huge gaps. She liked that she was able to utilise her trapped travel time to do it in.

ds sounds more like your dd he has asd and can't organsie notes etc and he likes Tassomai for maths but much prefers Seneca for science. He probably isn't going to get higher than a 6 and he resents any kind of study/revsision at allo but he does tolerate Seneca and it seems to help him.

I rate mygcsescience very highly for science as it helps with exam technique as well as recall

Comefromaway - yes dd sounds like your ds. We strongly suspect that she has high functioning asd ( another story entirely). I have been tearing my hair out because there is no way to get her to self-motivate or organise. I literally have to get her books out and tell her what she needs to be doing - and being not massively academic myself, I have been doing a poor job of it! I will keep Tassomai up my sleeve as a back-up for next year.

Greathat - thanks, I'll look at mygcsescience, I haven't heard of it before.

@GoldenNoodle if you do ask the school if they'd do a sub, I did one and it was a massive discount