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Dumbing down A levels?

By Dave F in Reader

Posted in In the news, education, Home, Wikipedia, Google on August 14, 2008 at 5:25 pm

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It’s that time of year when people start muttering about A levels.  Do better results mean cleverer kids or easier exams? I can just about remember my A levels (nearly 30 years ago) and I did a fair amount of looking at the work my daughter had to do for hers so I’m not in a bad place to comment.
As far as I can see the answer is yes and no.  No the questions aren’t any easier but yes the way you can sit them is.
Course work means you don’t have to rely on a good day to produce good work. It also means you can get some sneaky help but most of all it can be re-done. If you hand it in and get a B (or and E or an F) they hand it back and say do it better (with suggestions of how to).
The fact that teachers teach to the exam (in my day teachers occasionally “wasted” time telling you useful stuff that wasn’t on the syllabus) and both teachers an kids put a lot of effort into getting the grades has got to help too.
Plus there is all the help available outside of school. When I couldn’t do my calculus it was wait and see the teacher or walk to the library and see if they had some books. My daughter not only had homework clubs, revision books galore she also had Google and even me (my dad helped me but he hadn’t done A level maths). I have to say of all of those the one that was most help was probably google (most often linking to wikipedia)!
So exams don’t have easier questions and kids aren’t vastly cleverer but they are better informed (and certainly in this family) they work harder so improved results are no great mystery.

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Fake professor in Wikipedia storm

By Dave F in Reader

Posted in Wikipedia on March 9, 2007 at 4:44 pm

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I’ve been debating with a few people recently about how useful Wikipedia is (or isn’t) and then this came along

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6423659.stm 

Basically I treat wiki as part of the extended community. If I want to know something the first thing I do is ask around - just because a mate says something it doesn’t mean it is right. Depending on the importance & how confident / competent they sound I might take their word for it but I’m more likely to take what they say as a start point and confirm it elsewhere. Wiki is a structured way of asking around - more shouting across the pub than querying friends as you don’t know the person who answers or anything about them.

Anything important you need to check elsewhere but as a starting point it’s great.

There’s a longer article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4534712.stm

Certainly students handing in work and quoting wiki as their research need sorting out - unless it is about web trends when wiki is a source in itself!

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