photo credit: FotoBart

‘Grade inflation’ is the latest buzzword coming from the government these days. Want my view as to why grades have improved constantly over the last couple of decades? Because the government have got the message across that education is valuable, so people take it much more seriously these days and therefore don’t necessarily work harder, but work smarter to achieve the goal – which is maximum points.

It’s also incredibly easy to find information these days and get questions answered. You can blame the internet for that. Google, wikipedia, forums, twitter… we can transmit information quickly & easily. Grinds, software, forums… they’re all ‘teachers’ outside of the classroom which didn’t exist 20 years ago.

Your parents couldn’t do all that back in 19 ‘insert two digits here’. It’s only natural that as an economy develops, people want to learn more to get better jobs & get more money. That’s exactly what the government has told us to do and is still telling us to do – education is everything… we need a ‘knowledge economy’ bla bla bla…

But apparently, they can’t accept that students are smarter now than they were 20 years ago. They may have a point – i don’t believe i’m smarter (in general) than a student 20 years ago, but i can put money on it i’d kick his ass when it comes to sitting exams simply because i have so many different opinions and resources on hand to study. If i do any sort of study at all i should be able to produce a much more rounded & polished answer than the guy 20 years ago.

All he had was a local library and a teacher.

photo credit: Marcus Mo

You may not like it but maths is probably thee most important subject that we study and one that everyone needs to pass in order to reach third level education. Even if you don’t want to go to college you still need to know how to do your sums! You don’t want to go off and make millions only for someone to be skimming of the top just cos you don’t know how much you’re really making. Nearly every job that you do will involve maths. Maybe not some of the complex maths you’re doing in school but simple mathematical calculations.

Probably the biggest problem that people who hate maths have is relating the material covered on the leaving cert maths exam to real world situations. This too is a challenge for your teachers and one that they should be addressing to help things make more sense for you in class.

We recently reviewed a maths teaching product from DigitalGrinds.ie that helps you study for your leaving cert maths exam. If you’re starting to panic about passing your exams then this could be the solution for you. We’ve also secured an exclusive 15% discount for you if you go here, because we care

But lets be honest, grinds will cost you a bomb if you’re gonna make any progress (all those 1 hour lessons add up). Easter revision courses might help but they’re expensive and you have to give up your easter break.

The Digital Life Saver

One cheaper and potentially more productive option available to you might be e-software called ‘accelerate learning maths’ produced by a company called ‘outstanding solutions’. They’ve kindly given me a copy which i’ve been playing with for the past few days.

I’m as sceptical as you are when it comes to paid online tutorials or software which promises the world (for a tidy little sum of course!). As a student myself (all be it a college student), i never like paying for anything education related but i can safely say having spent the last few days really studying this software, it’s worth every cent of it’s €49 price tag (for higher level) or €65 (ordinary level). Read on further to get details about an exclusive theleavingcert.com offer…

I hated maths at school and it was my only ordinary subject. I had the ability to do higher level maths, but i couldn’t have been bothered putting in the work that’s required to get a good grade in higher maths… part of the reason for me hating maths was the course and the way it was taught. When i started college, guess what – i had another maths subject again and failed it this time (forcing me in to studying my ass off all summer to pass a repeat exam).

photo credit: FotoBart

It was just assumed in school that we had the same enthusiasm for maths as the teacher. It was never explained to us where maths could be used in real life or where certain theories came from etc.. i need to be able to find a use in real life for things i learn otherwise they’re no good to me! After just a few minutes of looking at this dvd, it was explained to me why we use letters in maths and where that idea orginated. They’re the small little things that don’t necessarily make maths interesting, but they help me understand maths and if i understand it, i increase my chances of getting better results.

So if you’re like me and aren’t motivated when it comes to maths, the tutorials are easy to follow and there’s plenty of explanation along the way. At times, examples seem to fly by and i get that familiar ‘what the…’ feeling but the beauty of these tutorials is that you can replay them. As many times as you want.

Why we like it

You can’t replay a maths class in school or replay a grinds lesson, so quite often you’ll forget important bits or forget how an example worked. I know i’m a disaster for just writing down answers and not writing down steps. I might understand how i arrived at the answer today, but i’ll probably forget the steps i took by tomorrow and that’s where the benefits of video tutorials come in.

You have no excuses… you can’t say you didn’t have the steps written down. You can’t say you missed that subject because you were off that day… everything you need to know is on this dvd and it’s easy to use and navigate to different topics.

How it works

For the higher level package, you get two discs (one for each paper). For the ordinary package you get one disc. On the ordinary level disc, you have a paper one and paper two section. You’ve a few different options as to ‘how’ you start to learn…

If you’re completely clueless, obviously starting in to exam questions isn’t going to help you, so you can take ‘theory tutorials’. On pretty much any topic you want. This allows you to sit back and absorb information, look at examples and how they’re constructed etc…

Once you start getting confident, you can move to the ‘grinds’ section (where you can take exam questions). You’re encouraged to come up with answers and then compare your answers to the actual solution (which is eventually given & explained bit by bit).

You can also monitor your own progress in past exam papers using a ‘progress’ section or if you’re getting fed up, you can enter a ‘prepare’ zone which allows you to chill out with some soothing classical music and images. Taking breaks is important and i’ve spoken about how music is proven to help you study before, so they really have thought about everything with this software..

Our Verdict

If i had a leaving cert maths exam tomorrow, i wouldn’t call up an old teacher and get grinds. I wouldn’t buy past papers and maths books or get solutions… i’d buy this software because it has all of that. Grind lessons, past papers, solutions, maths books… it’s got the whole lot crammed in to a dvd. It’s the swiss army knife for leaving cert maths and it gets a massive thumbs up from me. But why trust me? Download a free one hour demo version and check it out for yourself.

Exclusive Offer

We’ve been talking with Outstanding Solutions and managed to get you guys a 15% discount on both higher and ordinary level packages. This is a limited offer which will run for just a couple of weeks so don’t say you weren’t warned. Once it expires and you have to pay full whack. You can buy the software through this link.

Full Disclosure

By the way, we don’t do loving relationships on theleavingcert.com, so we weren’t paid or pushed to review this software. We speak our minds and if we don’t like something, we’ll either not bother talking about it or we’ll say we don’t like it Oustanding Solutions kindly gave us a review copy of their software, we liked it, reviewed it and later agreed on that temporary 15% discount for you guys.

photo credit: Jamiesrabbits

We’d prefer to do it this way as we’ll get the correct url for your school website and can have a look and get the proper details listed.

Here’s a few sites we’ve listed already:

• Ard Scoil Rís – Limerick
• Colaiste Choilm – Ballincollig – Cork
• Newbridge College – Kildare
• Sligo Grammar School
• St. Mary’s Secondary School for Girls – Baldoyle – Dublin

How does your school’s website rank compared to those listed above, or maybe your school doesn’t even have a website. If so don’t be afraid to drop us the contact details. Drop us a comment (there’s no registration needed) and we’ll add your school to our directory.

Thanks!

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Think about it though. Maybe you’re killing yourself during the week studying just to catch up after doing nothing all weekend again. Just try and leave a few hour spare at the weekend to get that leaving cert study done. There’s still loads of time, go back and revise your study plan and make sure you’re fitting in some work at the weekends too.

Anyone not bother with the weekend at all and goes flat out out during the week so they can relax at weekends? Drop us a comment to let us know and if you think you’re getting enough done this way.

photo credit: A.K. Photography

67% is a high percentage and I wonder how many of you have really thought about this one before voting. Has the fact that exams are getting closer by the minute made you biased towards assessment. Think about it, exams are a one of solution where you can cram last minute and still get what you want. If you’re doing continuous assessment and you’ve been lazy for the last 2 years, you’d be in serious trouble right now!

However some of you may learn better by doing continuous assessment. Imagine have 7 or 8 continuous assessment projects though (one for each subject). What would you do if you were expected to do lots of the work at home in your own time. I can’t help thinking that a lot of you were just thinking you’d rather not have to do these exams in June more than anything!

As well as possibly learning more another benefit of continuous assessment may be to prepare you better for college in September 2010 as you’ll probably be doing loads of coursework next year.

Continuous assessment does sound like a nice option but if you had the choice to start it not or start studying for June I think the exams might be your best option. Anyone changing their minds?

HL Irish – pattern for prose: An Bean Óg, Clare sa Spéir, An Bean Óg .. etc .. been like that for the past 11 years, An Bean Óg came up in 2009 … if they’re not mean, Clare sa Spéir will be on for 2010

photo credit: wstera2

Anyone else got any ideas? Is Alice right? Can you afford to gamble and study one only and forget about the rest?

I have to say I’d be tempted myself, but you’re always better to have a back up plan. Can anyone really predict what’s coming up on the leaving cert examinations in 2010? Don’t be shy! Let us know if you agree with Alice or share your opinions about other subjects too. Time is ticking and it may just be time to take a gamble!

Just incase you need them, here’s the Leaving Cert Exam Papers for Irish.

photo credit: uwa_studentservices

Back in the mid 90’s, only 1 in 3 of you took grinds but it’s more like 2 in 3 these days. You’re now richer, there’s more peer pressure on you to do well and you probably need to do well to go on to college to get a degree, get a better job, better career and earn more money.

I’m pretty sure you’re thinking along those lines. Money motivates most of us at the end of the day and we can earn more if we know more. So you probably understand education is good and necessary although right now, you probably don’t want to believe it!

Anyway, just a quick poll to see how many of you have actually taken grinds, just out of interest…

photo credit: The Construct Creative

For a lot of us normal people though, we suffer from this disease called ‘procrastination’. So what is it? It’s knowing you have something to do, acknowledging it has to be done and then not doing it. Grabbed straight from wikipedia, they say it “refers to the deferment of actions or tasks to a later time”.

Over the last few hours, i’ve been suffering from procrastination. I knew i had to write a blog post, i accepted i had to do it and then i just couldn’t have been arsed to do it until now. I have this stupid rule of having to blog once per day, so it’s now 11.06pm which means i have just 54 minutes to get this post published before a deadline.

And that’s how you beat procrastination – you don’t beat it at all, you just fool yourself with false deadlines or false punishments to make you work. If you have an exam next tuesday, pretend it’s next monday and prepare yourself as normal. You’re setting a ‘fake’ deadline which means that you’ve prepared yourself for a test as you normally would but when the deadline day comes, you find yourself with additional time (an added day) which allows you to cram even more stuff in to you head.

Easier said than done, i know but you can’t just take some pills for procrastination. If work needs done, work needs done. It’s as simple as that. The sooner you get started, the sooner you can finish – that’s the incentive. Usually if you’re delaying doing something it means you don’t want to do it or don’t enjoy doing it… so that’s why you’ll procrastinate when it comes to maths and not art or something like that (assuming you hate maths and like art).

Anyway, that’s my procrastination period complete for another day. I’ve published this post before my deadline which means my mind can rest and it also keeps the boss man happy (which is me).