Preparing Students for Exams – A Guide to Atomi for Teachers

Learning resources are becoming increasingly available to teachers and students. Not only do these resources help save teachers time in the classroom, but set students up for future success in their careers – especially in the face of the growth of technology.

Atomi is an online platform that offers syllabus-specific lesson plans that focus on preparing students for examinations on various subjects. They also design their video learning packages around information retention, so that students can use the information effectively in an exam environment. However, are these focuses enough to create a high-quality service?

Continue reading our Atomi guide to see their pricing, best features, and if there are any gaps that they need to improve that other platforms, like Zenva Schools, can do better.

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What Is Atomi?

Atomi is a learning resource provider that mainly focuses on preparing students for exams with their content. Their resources stick strictly to the syllabus, but their main aim is to change teaching methods to make the content more accessible and engaging.

The platform started with short videos about solving specific math problems, but the company grew after realizing that their approach to content was resonating with students and teachers.

Now, they target the global education market and provide a wide range of learning resources.

Preparing Students for Exams - A Guide to Atomi for Teachers

Who Is The Atomi Target Audience?

To give themselves the largest target audience, Atomi’s content aims at multiple target audiences, including:

  • Students: Atomi targets students who need the courses to retain important information for an exam on the subject.
  • Teachers: As well as targeting students, Atomi also attempts to lure in teachers with their courses. They specifically target teachers who need help preparing their students for tests or examinations.
  • Schools: Teachers can access Atomi courses individually, but Atomi can arrange a course package as an official part of a school’s teaching schedule. They do this by contacting the school and arranging a quote based on what they need from the service.

This being said, Atomi’s broad target audience and huge range of subjects mean they have a little less focus compared to other platforms. For example, Zenva Schools focuses specifically on technology subjects. In so doing, though, they only target a specific range of teachers and schools and are able to provide more than just exam preparation in their services.

Who Created Atomi?

Thomas O’Donahoo and Rob Barakat co-founded Atomi in 2011. They were both recent graduates and wanted to start a high-level online educational resource provider. So, they gradually hired a team of video design experts to help create informative content for teachers and students.

What Are Atomi’s Main Values?

Although Atomi has several company values, its primary mission is to make its online learning resources as engaging as they are informative. To achieve this, the owners aimed to create learning resources that help students retain information by being creative and fun.

Additionally, their other company values include:

  • Making the content simple: Using confusing terms or too much information can confuse the student and make it impossible for them to retain information. Therefore, Atomi makes its content simple and digestible.
  • Making the content clear: Along with being simple, the Atomi founders wanted to create content that was very clear so the students could remember the correct information.
  • Pique students’ interest with the content: Ultimately, the student won’t retain the information if the teaching resource isn’t engaging. So, Atomi aims to make content that is creative enough to pique students’ interests.

Of course, these values are easier said than done, and plenty of other platforms (Zenva Schools to name one) have the same sorts of goals. As such, it’s time to start talking content.

Preparing Students for Exams - A Guide to Atomi for Teachers

What Does Atomi Offer For Students And Teachers?

Although Atomi has a solid set of values, what do they actually offer to students and teachers?

We will take you through the main content offerings on the site and other tools that they offer to round out the package. We’ll also explore a bit later what they might be missing compared to other platforms like Zenva Schools.

Lesson Plans With Quick Lessons

The lesson plans on Atomi break up into smaller packages. They do this to make each part of the lesson digestible and easy to remember. Additionally, they simplify the language in the courses to make it easy for a student to retain it.

However, this can be a double-edged sword. Especially when it comes to subjects like technology, simplifying the language can mean students miss out on important technical terms that are relevant to the topic. As such, other platforms like Zenva Schools may be better – where the focus is given both to digestible lessons while maintaining a good balance on how simplified the topics are made.

Revision Lessons

Along with regular lesson plans, they also include revision lessons to refresh the student on the content from the other lesson plans. These will be shorter and more focused and may consist of quizzes to test the student’s knowledge.

That being said, other platforms like Zenva Schools offer a bit more. Not only can students access the content even outside school to rewatch lessons as much as they want, but supplement the learning with other materials. This includes things such as interactive lessons, quizzes, and even downloadable summaries of the lessons themselves.

Analytics For Teachers And Parents

On top of the lesson plans and courses, Atomi offers analytics for teachers and parents. These analytics can inform a teacher of how well a student is doing on a subject, the students that need the most help, and more. 

Worth noting, though, that other platforms offer slightly better analytics. For example, Zenva Schools offers not only the same kinds of analytics, but better control for teachers in segmenting their students. Teachers can create multiple classrooms within a “School Account” and view that classroom as a whole, and also track student’s exact progress through courses with relevant time stamps.

In other words, Atomi is a lot better for a single teacher vs. a school-wide system.

Curriculum-based Content

Because Atomi focuses on preparing students for tests and examinations, they stick strictly to the Australian curriculum standards to ensure the students get the correct information. They deliver the syllabus through videos, text-based lessons, and quizzes.

However, keep in mind we said Australia specifically. Other platforms offer similar sorts of content, but with a broader focus on more curriculum standards. For example, Zenva Schools is able to cover both Australian and American curriculum standards – making it friendlier worldwide.

How To Use Atomi

Atomi has a clear website layout with a search function to find courses and other learning resources. You can search for an individual course or search via the subject.

You can also choose between years 10, 11, 12, or 13. When you click on the year, you will see a drop-down list of the available subjects. For example, year 13 includes English, Science, Math, and Humanities (including social sciences).

This being said, other sites can offer a slight bit more where this is concerned. To example, Zenva Schools also allows you to filter between years (with a wider range of years covered) and subject. However, in addition to this, teachers can filter by curriculum standards, or even use the helpful course finder tool to pick a course when they’re unsure.

Preparing Students for Exams - A Guide to Atomi for Teachers

Is There Any Room For Atomi To Improve Their Services?

Although the Atomi platform has some solid features, there are areas where Atomi is lacking.

First, the set-up process is not very intuitive on Atomi, and teachers are going to need to put in quite a bit of time to even get the material ready for the classroom. Thus, for teachers strapped for time, this may be difficult. Alternatively, Zenva Schools, as one example, offers step-by-step guides for the setup and is built to have teachers ready to go within a matter of minutes.

Next, Atomi also lacks variety in its learning resources. They offer video courses, written pages, and quizzes, but they are missing fully interactive content and games to immerse students and make the experience more memorable. This is not to mention that most of their material is not printer-friendly – which other platforms like Zenva Schools do quite a bit better.

Finally, Atomi’s pricing structure is not the simplest – which we’ll discuss more in the next section.

What Is Atomi’s Pricing Structure?

Atomi has two tiers in its pricing structure that offer varying features for users:

  • Student tier: The student tier gives users access to over 1000 video lessons (on various subjects), interactive real-time quizzes, text lessons for in-depth information, progress trackers on the courses, and revision lessons. However, It costs $470 per year, and you can only choose a maximum of seven subjects on this tier.
  • School tier: Atomi’s school tier has every feature available on the student tier. Additionally, it gives teachers the class management feature, the feature for assigning students and classes a lesson, analytics on the students’ performance, an account manager, and user support via phone or email. The price depends on your class size (minimum of ten students) and your contract length. However, given the cost of the student tier, we can only imagine it’s quite expensive.

In comparison, many other platforms have much, much better pricing structures to be honest. For example, Zenva Schools charges an affordable price per year based specifically on the number of students. For this price, teachers and schools get the full amount of features, however. This includes classroom management, analytics, every course available on the platform, all supplemental materials, pre-made lesson plans with curriculum content descriptors, and more.

As such, there are definitely more affordable options out there for teachers on a budget.

Key Takeaways

Overall, Atomi is a good platform for exam-oriented teachers. With tons of resources, quizzes, and similar setup to prep kids for those all-important exams, it’s a great supplement to the main classroom in that regard, with assurances it’s matched to the Australian curriculum.

That being said, it is also quite expensive, as well as lacking in the robustness that other platforms have. Zenva Schools offers much of the same material (crafted by industry experts), tailored to curriculums, and with a ton more material for learning.

Additionally, many teachers also know exams are not the end-all – and often preparing students with real-life skills is more important – where other platforms like Zenva Schools shine with more. However, it is by no means a bad platform – just remember to explore your options!

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We’ll organize a free trial so you can test it out with your students in class!