Leaving Certificate Results

Congratulations to all students who received their results today!

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Exam Information - Business

Exam Info

The Leaving Certificate Business Syllabus is divided into 3 primary sections

• Section A - People in Business - Unit 1
• Section B - Enterprise - Units 2,3,4,5
• Section C - Environment - Units 6 & 7

The examination is set out differently depending on whether a student chooses to take the Higher or Ordinary Level paper. The primary difference being that Higher level students must also answer the Applied Business Question (ABQ). Below is a clear outline of both courses.

Higher Level - 3 Hours – 400 marks:

Section:	Contents:	Instructions:	Marks:
1	10 short Q’s	Answer any 8 -  10 marks each	80 marks - 20%
2	Applied Business Question	Compulsory Q, based on 3 units of the syllabus - you must answer all 3 parts.	80 marks - 20%
3	Part 1 – 3 Q’s Part 2 – 4 Q’s	You must answer 4 questions in total 1Q from part 1 + 2Q from part 2 + 1 other Q from either part.	All Q’s carry 60 marks, total 240 marks - 60%

Ordinary Level – 2.5 hours – 400 marks:

Section:	Contents:	Instructions:	Marks:
1	15 short Q’s	Answer any 10 – 10 marks each	100 marks - 25%
2	Part 1 – 3 Q’s Part 2 – 5 Q’s	You must answer 4 questions in total 1Q from part 1 + 2Q from part 2 + 1 other Q from either part.	All Q’s carry 75 marks, total 300 marks - 75%

You can also download the above information, with some additional information, by following this link.

Leaving Cert Business Exam Structure

The areas of the syllabus from where Applied Business Question comes from changes every year. They work on a 5 year rotation - below is 2011 - 2015.

• 2011 - Units 3,4,5
• 2012 - Units 4,5,6
• 2013 - Units 5,6,7
• 2014 - Units 1,2,3
• 2015 - Units 2,3,4

It is essential that you read each question very carefully to ensure that you know exactly what you are being asked and how best to answer the question.

Outcome verbs  are very important to understand as they will give you a clear understanding of what you must do when giving your answer. Below is a link to a list of outcome verbs and their explanations.

Outcome verbs for Leaving Certificate Business

Outcome verbs that appear frequently are:

Section 1 (Higher) - Illustrate, Explain, List, Outline , Define.

Section 2 and 3 (Higher) - Illustrate, Explain, List, Outline, Define, Analyse.

There has been alot of work put into assisting students on how best to answer Leaving Certificate exam questions. Below is a link to an approach that some students have found helpful.

A guide to answering exam questions.

It is also advisable that students go to the State Examination Commissions website to view past marking schemes and to learn how exams are corrected, where marks are allocated and what examiners are specifically looking for. 

Past exam papers and marking schemes

With specific regard to the area of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs & Intrapreneurs below are links to information on the occurance of questions in both Higher and Ordinary level papers in the Leaving Certificate from 1999 - 2010.

Higher Level 1999 - 2010

Ordinary Level 1999 - 2010

An excellent source of Higher Level Business sample exam questions and answers is a book called 'A Question of Business' by Mr. Philip Curry

Presentations

It is important to note the delivery of a good presentation will have a major impact on the level at which it is received. Most of us know the basics, but just to refresh everyones memories here's a funny link enjoy......Blinklife Presentation

33 Ways to use blogs in your classroom and in the educational setting

Drawing a blank on how you might use a blog in your own classroom? Here's a list to jump start your creativity. By no means is this list exhaustive; there are as many ways to use blogs in education as there are to use paper. :) Remember, blogs are a medium, not a genre. Some of these ideas are for the classroom in general, some are for younger students, some are for older students. Some could become group or classroom blogs, others are suited for individual student blogs. Next, determine to what degree do you want to have "conversations" with others. If you want global participation, ask "in what ways can I have students from another part of the world participate in this with us?". Ask also,"in what ways can we get experts involved with our blogs?" The sky's the limit! :)

Create a blog to communicate class/school information with parents. Post field trip information, field trip forms, parent helper calendars, general classroom guidelines and more.

Click here for 33 ways to integrate blogging into your teaching today!!!

Firefox Users

My students love Picnik.com to make images for their blogs - more so than Fotoflexer.com, more so than Flauntr.com, and more so than Pixlr.com. To my surprise, yesterday I stumbled upon the slickest Firefox add-on which integrates seamlessly with Picnik! Simply put, it makes taking screenshots a breeze, and greatly speeds up importing images into the Picnik online photo editor.

For starters, you must be using Mozilla Firefox (I am quickly becoming an ardent fan of this browser). At the top of the browser menu click on Tools, and then Add-ons.











Next, select "Browse all Add-ons".














In the search box type in "picnik" (note the funny spelling) and enter.






Click "Add to Firefox".





When prompted, click "Install Now".













Restart your browser (don't worry - Firefox will restore your tabs - another reasons to love this browser).















Okay! You're ready to rock 'n roll with this add-on. I'll demo by traveling to Lovelycharts.com, a website that's caught my eye these last few days.














Let's say I'd like to take a screenshot of this new piece of webware to put in an upcoming blog post. I'll right click and choose the option "Send Page to Picnik". I can send just the visible portion of the page, or the entire page (even portions of the image below the fold).


















Next, Picnik.com opens itself in a new Firefox tab and the screenshot appears. You are now ready to edit it and then save it as a .jpg! And look, no extraneous parts to crop off -- yes, very nice!











Now let's look at the other option. Say you want to edit (manipulate, add to, delete from - create a derivative) of an existing Creative Commons image. Navigate to the image and right click on it. Choose "Edit Image in Picnik".


















The add-on starts up a new Firefox tab and throws the image into Picnik so you can go to town editing it and then saving it! You've just eliminated the need to download the image, navigate to the image, then upload the image. A great timesaver!










Downsides? A few. I'd love it if attribution information could be captured somehow when this is used on a single image. Of course, I can always bookmark where I found the picture using Diigo or a similar service. Additionally, I've noticed that if you use the Picnik add-on on a .jpg that has IPTC metadata embedded in it , upon saving it in Picnik.com, this file info is stripped out. Retaining this info is sometimes required for attribution purposes. Would love to see Picnik.com find a work around that preserves this metadata.

Check out this excellent introduction to Prezi