Tag Archives: ireland

Topic of the Week: Plagiarism

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | 4 comments

I’ve found myself thinking about plagiarism a lot since I started this website. There’s not much confusion about what it is – taking someone else’s language, thoughts, ideas or expressions and passing them off as your own – but there seems to be no consensus anymore as to whether or not it’s ok. Particularly when it comes to the leaving cert.

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The major problem lies in the sheer volume of information your average teenager is expected to hold in their brain in order to sit this exam. If the teacher doesn’t provide a no nonsense, here are the essentials, forget about real learning synopsis of every aspect of the course, students and parents will look elsewhere. And who can really blame them? If it’s possible to fake knowledge and understanding and thus achieve an impressive set of results and entry into your college course of choice, why wouldn’t you? If there’s one thing we know about human beings, it is this. We do what works. If there’s a shortcut, we’ll take it.

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So does rote learning work? In the short term, possibly, and it really depends on the subject. In the long term, not at all. You’ll go to college and suddenly independent thinking, critical analysis, originality and initiative are all expected of you. In fact I frequently hear college lecturers bemoan the months of effort they have to put into de-programming first year college students from the rote learning that has become second nature to them in secondary school. My focus on turning my students into better writers sometimes drives them to utter despair but a robotic ability to learn off reams of facts is not something I can ever or will ever view as anything but pointless.

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There is no easy solution. Continuous assessment is wide open to plagiarism – you get your uncle the carpenter to do your woodwork project and voila, you’ve got an A. Reforming college entry is an obvious starting point – if you take away the points race, you remove the pressure on students and teachers to teach/learn to the test – but this solution is also riddled with problems. How else do you decide who gets into college? A lottery? Finally, reducing the number of subjects students study seems an obvious step forward, but is it right to narrow their exposure to the world of knowledge and ideas so early? And will students again just choose the ‘easy’ options? We already have a massive problem with a lack of uptake in Maths, Science and IT. Do we really want to make things worse?

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As for English as a subject, 75% of the Junior Cert and 55% of the Leaving Cert you will not see until you turn over and read the exam papers. You can rote learn until the cows moo loudly at dawn but if you don’t twist what you’ve learned to suit the question you will not do well. And most importantly of all, you must be able to write well. Perhaps years of sample answers you’ve been encouraged to learn off do you the greatest disservice of all, because they undermine your opportunities to practise constructing clear coherent sentences of your own.

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Finally, be aware that Ruairi Quinn has recently been quoted critiquing our fondness for predictable exam papers that don’t require students to think laterally, apply knowledge or demonstrate understanding. I think in coming years the exam papers will get less predictable. Whilst that makes me feel sorry for those of you desperate to get into your chosen college course, on some level it does make more sense to offer a genuine challenge. If only the stakes weren’t so high, I’d feel more supportive of it.

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Topic of the week: Education

Posted on November 30, 2011 by | Comments Off on Topic of the week: Education

Topic of the Week: EDUCATION

In Ireland, education is a national obsession. Every day there’ll be at least one article in the papers about exams, grinds, points, college places or grants. Every year we hear about the Young Scientist exhibition, the Texaco art competition, the Concern debates and the All-Island school choir competition, as well as the many aspiring entrepreneurs who develop new products and often end up with international funding to develop their brand. Nonetheless, we also live in an era where our method of assessing students (the dreaded Leaving Cert) and method of selection for entry to third level (the points system) is brutal. The pressure on students is immense and the recession only raises the stakes as we all begin to feel that qualifications are the only way to get out & stay out of the dole queue. Add into the mix the fact that multi-national corporations are starting to question the emphasis on rote learning in our system (a system which produces graduates (supposedly) incapable of thinking critically or creatively) and we suddenly realise this is not exactly the recipe we need to lift ourselves out of the doom or to create the ‘smart economy’ of the future that would make Ireland the place to do business. So what is it like to go to school in Ireland now? And what changes do we need to make to transform our schools so that they become the global model for success?

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Sample Questions:

2009

Write an article (serious and/or light-hearted) for a school magazine about your experience of education over the last number of years.

2007

Imagine you are running for the position of Student Council President in your school. Compose an informative election leaflet encouraging students to vote for you. It should outline your own leadership qualities and the changes you would like to introduce into your school.

2004

You have been asked to give a short talk to a group of students who are about to start first year in your school. Write out the text of the talk you would give.

2003

You have been asked by the school principal to give a talk to your class group on the importance in life of “understanding the system”. Write out the talk you would give.

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Openings & Endings

Posted on November 26, 2011 by | Comments Off on Openings & Endings

“Oh wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?”

It’s happened to us all. You cosy up on the couch to watch a movie but despite the massive bowl of popcorn, industrial size bag of malteesers, pint glass of coke and a surround sound system that could shake the dead in their shrouds, after twenty minutes you’re squirming, fidgeting and generally feeling vaguely frustrated. You channel surf in the hope of finding something better – or you stick it out to the bitter end but wander off to bed lamenting the fact that you’ll never get those wasted two hours of your life back again. So what is it that draws you into a story and then leaves you feeling deeply satisfied at the end???

I’ve recently been looking at how writers begin and end their stories. One question that frequently appears on the Junior Cert asks you to examine whether the opening and/or closing scene of the novel/play/short story you have studied impressed you. For the Leaving Cert you need a firm grasp of how your single and comparative texts begin and end.  Regardless of genre – film, novel, play or short story – as a reader/viewer you have certain expectations & if these are not fulfilled you may just walk out of the theatre or throw aside the book! However you may find it difficult to verbalise exactly what it is that left you feeling frustrated & disappointed so here’s a list:

The opening chapter or scene should do most or all of the following:

  1. Introduce the setting – where and when the story takes place.
  2. Grab your attention – make the reader curious by holding back info. & creating some unanswered questions in our minds.
  3. Introduce main characters AND make sure they are in some way likable/sympathetic.
  4. Something should happen – the plot should begin.
  5. You might want to introduce the central theme(s).
  6. Style of writing or mise en scene must be descriptive/cinematic.

What you do NOT want:

  1. Too much background info which slows down the pace of the action & can make it boring.
  2. Too many characters introduced all at once which can be confusing.
  3. If you find the language or plot too difficult it can be off-putting – but this might be ‘your’ problem so be wary of writing off a novel or film for this reason.

However a novel/play or film can have a perfectly decent opening scene but still leave you with a sour taste in your mouth. We’ve all had the experience of coming out of the cinema feeling vaguely harassed and bewildered because the end just didn’t make sense. Or it was totally predictable and cliched. Or it was cheap – some kind of deus ex machina because the writer couldn’t think of any other way to end things. So here’s a list of elegant endings…

The end of a film/play/novel should do most or all of the following:

  1. Writer must give us closure – an air of finality. We need the writer to tie up most loose ends (generally speaking to be left thinking is good, to be left wondering is annoying).
  2. You want a twist – an ending which is unexpected makes us feel shocked & energised. A predictable ending (one which is clichéd & expected) is boring & disappointing for the audience.
  3. The end must make the audience FEEL something – it doesn’t matter whether it’s happy or sad or frightening or a mixture of loads of conflicting emotions. The important thing is that you made the audience care about the characters & the ending produced an emotional response in them.
  4. The end should leave you feeling that you’ve learnt something, it should leave you thinking about the themes & characters and should somehow capture a profound truth about life. The best stories change you as a person and offer you a new way of looking at the world.

What you do NOT want:

  1. Sudden ending – we’re left with no film idea of what happened to the main characters.
  2. Predictable ending – no twist, nothing unexpected. A story-by-numbers which follows genre rules so closely that we know exactly what to expect.
  3. Lots of loose ends left dangling. Challenging us to decide for ourselves what the ending means is fine but don’t just ‘forget’ to resolve things.
  4. Tacked on / far-fetched / sudden ending – one that doesn’t ‘fit’ in with the rest of the plot or one that isn’t credible.
  5. An ending which kills someone off for no good reason – or worse a story with such lacklustre characters that you don’t care if they live or die!

My students also suggested that you don’t want an ending where good is punished and evil rewarded. I don’t really agree with this. Of course bad things happening to good people is upsetting but it’s also true to life. Sadly.

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Hamlet lecture

Posted on October 3, 2011 by | Comments Off on Hamlet lecture

Here’s a link to a lecture delivered by Professor Hubert McDermott of NUIG on Hamlet.

http://katiemolloy.podomatic.com/entry/2011-10-03T13_49_48-07_00

I also came across this website recently – you can do quizzes in most subjects and for every question you get right medicine is donated to families in the developing world! It’s a lovely idea and makes you more inclined to do the quizzes.

Here’s the link – http://www.thebigtest.org/about.php there’s a quiz on Hamlet up there already.

Just to bombard you with Hamlet related info, here’s an article from the Guardian questioning Shakespeare’s authorship…http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/14/shakespeare-playwright-trevor-nunn-mark-rylance?CMP=twt_gu

That’s all for now folks 😉

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Digital Bootcamp: a view from the trenches.

Posted on July 12, 2011 by | 3 comments

I love words. I love books. I love talking.

So as I drive the long windy road from Mayo to Cork my brain tosses and turns, trying to assimilate the idea that there might be something more powerful than words, something that could bring learning to life in splendid technicolour in a way that just isn’t happening for so many students today.

Technology.

But my love of books fights back bravely. I think of my groaning bookshelves wrapping around the walls of our study; of my years spent working in the greatest second-hand bookshop in Ireland and possibly in the world (make the pilgrimage to Charlie Byrne’s if you haven’t been there already); of studying English in NUIG; of the smell and feel of my battered copies of Hamlet and Macbeth and King Lear and Wuthering Heights and of the layers of meaning that emerge with each new reading of Kavanagh’s epic poem The Great Hunger. And I think what a shame it would be to ‘fix’ the meaning of a poem by turning it into a 3 minute video montage. I think about how every time I see a film adaptation I invariably prefer the book (the Lord of the Rings being the only exception) and the battle rages on as I near my destination, full of excitement and trepidation.

Day 1 of bootcamp is utterly exhausting and absolutely fabulous. We spend the day learning and creating, the stuff of great classrooms all over the world, and my mind begins to open to the possibilities. What if it weren’t about a choice between books and technology, but rather a marriage of the two? What if technology were the portal to lead the lost sheep back to the fold of language? As our little group of three creates a short film about two talking chairs I realise the potential this has to revolutionise my students appreciation of personification. When we start recording the voice over track I can almost touch a new dawn in my students’ creation of dialogue. We’re supposed to finish at 4.15 but we cannot, will not, leave our silly rough masterpiece unfinished. So we keep going. And the ‘teachers’, our ADE’s (Apple Distinguished Educators) wait with us.

That evening, brain utterly melted, I return to my BnB and have a long chat with the owner, whose daughter has just finished the leaving cert. He describes how one evening she appeared in the doorway, face awash with tears, arms laden down with schoolbooks, and hysterically f*cked them out onto the back lawn. She is a clever girl. And a hard worker. But the pressure is too intense. Now I find myself questioning my devotion to the written word, wondering if there isn’t a better way, as her father goes on to describe the morning the exams began, visiting the doctor to get a prescription for his daughter, forced to medicate her just to get her through it.

Day 2 the whirlwind continues with workshops on animation and I discover that you can learn to create something (albiet not very good!) in half an hour.

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yru_P41fPus]

Then it’s podcasting and apps and all day we are creating, using the iMacs and iPads supplied by Eanna @ Apple for the course to happen not just sitting in a room listening to someone talk. The day ends with ePubs and I am blown away, immediately seeing that they are far far superior to regular books, at least from a learning perspective. You can imbed photos, videos, diagrams with moving parts, annotate the text, click on any word you don’t understand and a definition pops up. So I’m really disappointed that they only work on iPads (so far) because I began this course DETERMINED NOT TO BE MARKETED TO but at lunch both days we all talk about wanting an iPad and I’m not so sure now that I’ve succeeded. I can only hope that the PC / android world catches up and fast because god knows our schools cannot afford all this new technology but as a country we cannot afford to be left behind either so I try to think of ways to use what we already have at school and for a moment I am overwhelmed by the task at hand and I begin to fear that I may have to be the one who creates all of this interactive video content for learning and my blood runs cold because I know I cannot possibly do it. As the day ends, my brain is bleeding, my body weary. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I talk to my dear husband John who is sick and who has had a terrible day minding our almost three year old who is too young to understand the cruelty of saying, repeatedly and hysterically ‘I don’t want you daddy, I want mama” and the temptation to get into my car and just drive home to help them out is strong. I don’t have to be here tomorrow. But I want to be. So I stay.

And I am glad. Day 3 is a play day, we learn a little Chinese from Mark Pentleton (radio lingua), the art of planning and storyboarding from Ciaran Mc Cormack (FIS), the far-reaching possibilities of using this technology in the classroom from Cormac Cahill (a humble teacher like ourselves who took part in bootcamp last year and now teaches on it!) and then we spend the rest of the day putting into action all we have learned and I begin to realise the most important thing I’ve gained from bootcamp is not a hunger for apple products (that’s there too but I’m resisting the urge to spend money I don’t have) but an understanding of what needs to change in my classroom. It is in the act of creating that the learning occurs. I know this. But cutting and sticking magazines to create posters is NOT exciting in a digital age. Come September the best thing I can do for my students is to stand back and let them make the meaning for themselves. Using pc’s and mac’s and flip cameras and mobile phones and mp3 players and iPads or android tablets: using whatever devices we can get our hands on in these cash-strapped times. And if we get stuck, there’s always Ciaran’s website www.tme.ie to pull us out of trouble. And my long suffering husband of course!

In the meantime, school’s out for summer! So I practice my new skills creating a montage that my daughter Hazel will not appreciate when it’s wheeled out on her 21st birthday!

[vimeo clip_id=”26862923″]

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