Leaving Cert '11/'12 Off-Topic 2

Oh god, no need to tell me about the difference between higher and ordinary Maths! :P As soon as I was (reluctantly) let into the higher level class this year, the teacher said 'do you know how difficult this is going to be?' and I was like 'yeah' and then she just went 'ok, take that, and imagine it ten times harder'. :pac:

She was right. :cool:



Also, I have to agree with the above post, loads of people struggle hugely with ordinary level, not out of a lack of intelligence, just because of the way it's taught. People learn Maths differently and the Leaving Cert Maths course doesn't suit everyone, higher, ordinary or foundation level!

Patchy~ wrote: »

True, but the same could be said of language-y people or even worse, people who speak Irish as their first language and get extra points for it.

God that wrecks my head. They do the LC in their mother tongue just like the rest of us and could fail maths had it been in English, but nooo, they did it in Irish so they get more points, the equality is overwhelming me :rolleyes:

Also its a bit fair imo - usually extremely mathsy people struggle with languages, and have to do OL Irish and French to matriculate which really eats into their points. I guess applied maths and physics fix them up there but meh, guess it evens out unless you're like some of the geniuses here :P

What cúnts, preserving our language, ey? :P I feel so guilty for getting extra points for speaking Irish and English bilingually here guys, I really do. It hurts me, you know? I understand that I'm stealing, and I'm sorry. :pac: Haha I'm not going to do most exams in Irish though, Irish translations of stuff on the syllabus are just soooo dumbed down, in most cases there is no actual translation, the sounds are just copied over into Irish letters. Like, in History, because there's no allowance on the marking scheme for quality of writing (in Irish), you could write like the most boghopping, sheep-shagging flute in the world in history in Irish, and still have a good chance to get a high B/A. :P The essays get so dumbed down, an issue that's complex in history in the english language turns into something like this directly translated:
"Hitler wanted to get big army. Everyone else was unhappy. They got together and made pact to stop Hitler getting a big army. Hitler got bigger army. Hitler started a war. The people who didn't like Hitler were very angry and there was big fight."
Seriously :L And that's why I don't do most of my exams in Irish, I actually like to understand what I'm writing about. BTW don't get me started on Physics LOL. The Irish language was never, ever meant for explaining scientific theories. :pac: I'm doing HL everything except for maths, which I'm really happy with to be honest, if I had to choose to do HL maths and OL languages or something like that I'd still choose to do OL maths and stay HL on everything else!

Dwellingdweller wrote: »

FFS people should just go on Khanacademy and be given tests once a week to help them know where they're at in their studies. 0 euro a year for students to watch videos online -> 30k a year minimum for somebody who 50% of the time can barely teach the subject they're supposed to have done in college. Plus students could actually enjoy school and have the craic with their mates instead of pretending to listen in maths class. Obvs ya could get in the best (like, the best) teachers possible to teach HL maths to people who wanted but paying some dick 30k a year to produce students who don't understand half of what they're supposed to learn is just, stupid!

Are you suggesting that people just get to watch videos from Khanacademy in maths class rather than being taught by a teacher? Or am I misinterpreting you?

YeaaahFaoiSin wrote: »

I dunno our teacher hadn't a clue how to teach Project Maths. It's not really fair on the teachers either expecting them to teach material not involved in their degree and without proper guidelines. They were completely unprepared to introduce the new Maths course.

It's pretty easy stuff in fairness like, it's just the way it's taught is stupid and the way questions are laid out is totally illogical. The way paper 1 is done is perfect, just replicate that for paper 2 and everything'll be cool. And if someone goes to college to study maths, they should bloody well be able to teach secondary level (ordinary level!) maths with no problem :L If someone went to college and did english lit and became a teacher, he'd get the piss taken out of him every year when the syllabus changed if he said 'rofl, new books, cant teach them. too complicated. soz.' See what I mean? :P

leaveiton wrote: »

Are you suggesting that people just get to watch videos from Khanacademy in maths class rather than being taught by a teacher? Or am I misinterpreting you?

Kinda, but not really, I'm suggesting to scrap maths class and be allocated time to watch khanacademy videos and study them themselves. Then, if they feel like they need someone to help them, they can be assigned a tutor who will help them (lol, wtf am I talking about, this is just me thinking out loud). As lots of people say they end up hating maths because of the way it's taught. That happened to me, my teacher for the j.c was a tit and I messed it up badly for the junior thusly, but last summer I would watch a khanacademy video every day and do like 1-2 hours of examples, and my maths is at a good standard now (high B, A OL) nothing amazing, just a good standard. Thing is, with a video you can pause, rewind, replay bits where you might got lost with a teacher (or where a teacher might get impatient), and you can really get what you're trying to learn. Plus it's free. This country doesn't have money to be throwing away on inefficient teachers.

btw I'm really not trying to turn this into a discussion about politics but its one of the reasons I think khanacademy is so good. :P He says it himself, some teachers are píssed off by khanacademy because it endangers their jobs.

Dwellingdweller wrote: »

Kinda, but not really, I'm suggesting to scrap maths class and be allocated time to watch khanacademy videos and study them themselves. Then, if they feel like they need someone to help them, they can be assigned a tutor who will help them (lol, wtf am I talking about, this is just me thinking out loud). As lots of people say they end up hating maths because of the way it's taught. That happened to me, my teacher for the j.c was a tit and I messed it up badly for the junior thusly, but last summer I would watch a khanacademy video every day and do like 1-2 hours of examples, and my maths is at a good standard now (high B, A OL) nothing amazing, just a good standard. Thing is, with a video you can pause, rewind, replay bits where you might got lost with a teacher (or where a teacher might get impatient), and you can really get what you're trying to learn. Plus it's free. This country doesn't have money to be throwing away on inefficient teachers.

btw I'm really not trying to turn this into a discussion about politics but its one of the reasons I think khanacademy is so good. :P He says it himself, some teachers are píssed off by khanacademy because it endangers their jobs.

What is this khanacademy you speak of. Can I access it for free???

Togepi wrote: »

A friend of mine is doing loads of maths modules in college and he was saying to me recently - why do we spend eight years in national school learning how to add, subtract, divide and multiply, when all of that is just done on a calculator from first year of secondary school onwards? Surely we'd be better off leaning some basic algebra and geometry in national school so that we'd have a slightly higher level of maths leaving primary school!

Definitely, adding and multiplying and all that stuff doesn't teach you anything. Imagine if kids were able to do simple algebra by 3rd/4th class, they'd be ready to start doing differentiation by 1st/2nd year in secondary school. It'd make things so much easier for people in the long run. I remember in primary school if someone asked if we could learn algebra the teacher would actually be like "No!", really strangely.

leaveiton wrote: »

While I do agree that the likes of khanacademy are great, there needs to be a balance. My teacher tries to do that, but fails because she's really terrible. She ends up showing us videos instead of teaching herself - which really isn't a good approach, and just reeks of laziness. What would be a good way to go about it would be for the teacher to take a hands-on approach at first, by teaching and explaining the topic themselves, and then showing a video to help explain the topic further. This is what some of my other teachers (chemistry, biology) do and it really works. No matter how good some videos are (and I'm not disputing that some are really excellent), I don't think they should be used as a replacement for teaching.

Yeah, that sounds like a really good idea! The thing I concern myself with though is - is it worth it? Economically like. But I suppose ya kinda have to prioritise quality of education too. I can see how it'd seem lazy too for a teacher just to play videos of stuff all the time :P But it kinda makes sense when you think about it, all that time teachers spend drawing stuff on whiteboards/blackboards is just removed from the equation with videos, saves so much time/energy. Would your chem and bio classes do better than classes that do it the traditional way do you think?

Martin_94 wrote: »

What is this khanacademy you speak of. Can I acces it for free???

Enjoy! It's really good, I used it to revise Physics (the dude has 3 degrees, engineering, compsci, pure maths... all from MIT. ) all this year. He's great at explaining stuff like.