Zero Quality Assurance in Leaving Cert Exam Corrections says Leading Academic
Zero Quality Assurance in Leaving Cert Exam Corrections says Leading Academic
(Dublin, Ireland, Monday September 3rd 2012).
A leading academic has finally been able to prove over the weekend that Ireland’s leaving cert students have been set up to fail due to being left on borderline marks that can make the difference between passing or failing and getting a higher grade.
Dr. Naoisé O’Reilly Ph.D is concerned that she has witnessed categorical proof that there’s no consistency within the exam papers which leads to a domino effect and ‘it’s pot luck on how well you do overall in the exams.’
The Irish woman says, ‘sure this is going to rock the boat but I’m used to starting national debates and young people’s lives are being messed with here. Afterall, parents and students don’t have a voice and the majority of teachers I speak with tell me they’re afraid to go out on a limb and stick their neck out.’
A simply algorithm could have changed all this and Dr. O’Reilly says, ‘in fact I wrote an algorithm that has been working successfully in an Irish 3rd level institution for a number of years now.’
Dr. O’Reilly started computer programming aged 8 despite being written off all the way through school due to a severe learning difficulty.
Naoisé looks forward to meeting the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn later this month and putting a case before him for a decentralised process where schools have more responsibility for the exam process and there can be exceptional quality assurance in place to prevent any inconsistencies.
Extract for the Purple View
The Purple View Book Extract:
“Everything we do at The Homework Club is designed to create a learning environment that students can enjoy.”
In the initial interview I look for patterns in Life through sports, home and school. What you are really seeing is peoples natural tendencies. In an ideal World we shouldn’t realise that we’re learning at all. One of the difficulties that I have with the conventional system is that we try to stamp these out. A great example of this is the 4-year-old Kid who doesn’t read well but uses the pictures in the book to give them a sense of what the story is about. When someone covers over the pictures they take away this visual way of taking in information which is that natural tendency of a visual learner. So the next 3 chapters are going to talk about these 3 natural ingredients that everybody has - which are potential, personality and aptitude.
Blue represents a Person’s true nature and potential within. It’s seen to be the colour of faith, truth, confidence and being exceptionally deep in nature.
We use Red as it’s seen to be the colour of energy, happiness, passion, determination, love, power and desire. We tend to have very negative associations with personality expression in the conventional school model - the negative associations with red are anger. We see this side of the personality apparently when people feel constrained in their behaviour and self-expression.
We have now successfully combined potential, personalities and aptitudes into 4 simple ways of working. The next 3 sections in this book are going to describe the outcomes and amazing results that happen when you use this approach.
We use Yellow - Yellow is seen to be the colour of joy and intellect - we classically find people clever because of their skills - classically I believe we see people as “normal” when they have one of two multiply intelligence, linguistic or mathematical - these are what I generally assess. But I believe truly clever people have a grasp of their multiplicity. Your aptitudes alone are not enough to make you smart. You have to realise them and approach tasks in the best way for you.
The box - everyone has this idea that they would like to all “fit-in” and be the same as everyone else - it’s like a giant box we all belong to. So I decided with this method to create one “box” but the difference is that everyone is different in the box and has their own place. They can still be themselves while fitting in. I think of it more like a house with all the doors and windows open where everyone can just come on in - a box still seems a little constraining. But the yellow box in the middle of this picture is one where everyone can be happy as how they really are.
This yellow "box" for me is now the Expression Developist™ Concept, the next instalment of The Purple View that I am currently writing and will be available very shortly! Why we need a new objective in education.
In the mean time enjoy The Purple View. Link to The Purple View
Dr Naoisé O'Reilly (Expression Developist™)
The Homework Club’s journey into Confidence Club
As We re-locate to Dublin City Centre this August it seems a good time to reflect on All that We have created and achieved here at The Homework Club in just over 3 years.
Our main purpose for re-locating is to have access to many more Students and to focus on what We really love and have developed from Our experience over 3 and a half years.
I have attached some short video clips that sum up some of what We have achieved and some of the outstanding feedback We had from the Students We have worked with. As there are 500+ Student feedback comments it’s not possible to include them all. But I wished to attempt to give You a sense of what We have developed in this short amount of time.
In setting up The Homework Club I always wished to create an environment where We all continued to learn. The hugely committed Tutors and Students needing support. I would like to think that Everybody has expanded Their horizons by being part of this experience - including Me.
In just 3 and a half years We have not only helped and supported these Students in Their lives and education - We have taken Our experiences to create 2 more projects to take all of Our dreams in. The Purple Learning Project, www.purplelearning.ie and Confidence Club, www.confidenceclub.ie
In setting up The Homework Club there have been 2 main differences in Our approach to education. Firstly, the way We have gone about making education accessible to all of Our Learners. We have achieved this by using Our own unique learning method - now known as The Purple Learning Project. This is now the outreach element that is allowing us to take Our methods back into all education environments through Our own Workshop experiences.
Secondly, We have always had different objectives and perceptions of what success is for Students. We have always felt that not only are students always good at something but They should be able to use these talents to be good at everything. The Confidence Club is about allowing us to step away from the traditional expectations of success in education and allowing all Our students to fulfil Their dreams - no mater how crazy they may seen now.
Our first Confidence Club Workshop takes place this August.
Confidence Club Workshop August 2012 – Primary to Secondary School Transition.
DNA extraction of a kiwi plant in The Homework Club kitchen
Lesson devised by Graham Huges who has taught maths, science, computers and biology at The Homework Club for the last two years.
Graham Hughes is studying a PhD in Bioinformatics at UCD. He is interested in Science, particularly biology and believes with the correct approach, science can be made accessible and enjoyable to all students. Graham also works on computer techniques to make students more motivated to do well in mathematics.
DNA, DNA come out and play...
If you were to zoom in closely on a piece of your skin, you would see it is made up of millions of cells. If you were to zoom in on a cell you would see it is made up of smaller organelles. If you were to zoom in on certain organelles you would see that they contain DNA. DNA stands for DeoxyriboNucleic Acid and is made up of long strands of the letters A,T,G and C. The arrangement of all these letters in your DNA is the ‘recipe’ for you.
All animals and plants have DNA in their cells. By using household materials we managed to extract and view some of the DNA in a kiwi! Even though you cannot even see kiwi cells with the naked eye, with the tricks of the trade, we can gather enough DNA to make it easily visible. All it takes is a little chemistry...
Firstly we need to make an ‘extraction buffer’. This involved putting water in a plastic cup, adding 2 small sachets of salt and putting 2 squirts of hand soap, giving it a good mix. The soap breaks up the fatty kiwi cell membranes and the salt makes the DNA clump together.
Mocks and the sky falling in – Chicken Licken Syndrome
I have written about the mocks before, the top tips of why we do them and how we get through but this year I'd like to write on something slightly different. The "Chicken-Licken-syndrome" where students seem to genuinely feel like the sky is falling in on top of them! The mocks are a test run - you are meant to make mistakes.. that's the whole point of doing them!
For some of The Students at The Homework Club this happens in a more spectacular fashion. I myself did very badly in my mocks as do many students with learning difficulties. As the department of education has not granted who will and will not receive accommodations in their exams, very few if any schools allow these students to sit their exams in a similar environment to how they will in June. We are overwhelmed by the exam hall experience - I'm conducting some research at the moment in why some students are hyper-sensitive and how this can helped. We don't have a reader and hence we read the questions wrong, we take the wrong meaning and we answer a completly different question. Some studnets haven't got to grasp with the whole course in one "bulk" form - they are struglign to put all the secitons together and maybe they haven't covered their best seciton yet! No one tells you how to sit an exam and for some studets who really do need to do a visual map of the answer and the question, this is highly discouraged and implied to be a waste of time when it's not as all - it's a vital way of thinking for them! If you are going to use a laptop maybe you didn't get to do this in the mocks.. there are so many factors as to why students find exams hard.
I call this time of the year "crushing season" because I watch the students who we have built up since September lose complete confidence in their abilities. 
We have to build them up again from the floor. I really question at this stage if the mocks are a good exercise at all? Surely there must be a better way to have a test run?
The sky really isn't falling in and there is loads of time left to fix the mistakes - but it is very hard to show people your mistakes when you are made to feel so bad for making them.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly
