Doing An A Level

I saw this really interesting article on the Beeb this week about calls for a shift away from written exams to being able to do them on the computer. According to the article:

AQA chief executive Andrew Hall welcomed Ms Nisbet's comments and said it was "really important" that students be "assessed in the same way that they learn and using the technologies that are commonplace in the world outside the classroom".

Personally speaking, this would be a great move, although I appreciate that the shift will have taken place by the time I do my first exam in a year. My hand-writing was already pretty bad, and has got worse since I hardly write anything - and what I do write are just notes for me to read. I think I'm going to struggle to write for 90 mins, cover everything that I want to say, AND make it legible. On top of this, I'm completely out of practice of writing in a medium where you can't cut and paste, start at the end and move things around. I think at least half of the revision period is going to be taken up practicing my handwriting under timed conditions.

The article has a link within it to another whether its easier doing an A Level twenty years on. One interesting thing the journalist says is that "Suddenly a couple of hours a week in an evening class wasn't really going to be enough - the syllabus was aimed at students doing six hours of lessons each week, supplemented by homework assignments". I would agree with him on this, but I personally prefer that I am able to work at my own pace when I want and that I don't have to put up with idiots in the class carping on about rubbish (I found this even when I was doing classes with adults). I think the main (perhaps only) disadvantage is that, while you have tutor support with ICS, there really is no substitute to having physical access to a tutor who has possibly taught the syllabus for years and who knows all the tricks to get good grades for students.

Speaking of grades, this week my main goal is to write and submit my end of unit test for Britain and Appeasement. I'm also hoping that I can start and complete the second volume of the Kershaw biography of Hitler.

Britain and Appeasement - an Update

I've now finished taking all my notes on Britain and Appeasement and have printed them out ready to go. There is no way near as much material as in the Russia topic, but I'm guessing that is because in the classroom a lot of time would be taken up covering how to analyse texts. My plan now finish the first volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, do the end of unit ICS test, and then read vol 2. After that, I'll draw up some plans of exemplar answers for the past exam papers on the topic and let my tutor see them.

Also, the more that I think about it, the more I think that writing my coursework on something around Europe in the 19th Century would be a good way of closing the circle. All things being equal, I'll start working on that over summer.

Second Stage Completed

I've now finished taking notes from Britain: Foreign & Imperial Affairs 1919-39, Hitler, Appeasement and the Road to War, and Appeasement, and now just have to finish reading The Age of Appeasement (which is by no means a page-turner). The next stage will be to produce some plans for the past exam questions and get feedback from my tutor.

I'm also thinking about the coursework. I was going to do something on slavery, to take advantage of the material we have at work. I've changed my mind, though, as the sample material in the ICS pack is from 19th Century Europe and it might be nice to do that as it was the topic that I began back in the day when I started my A Level and would be (hopefully) a great way of closing the circle.

Britain and Appeasement - first stage completed

I've completed the first stage of my note-taking - using the material in the ICS coursepack for the initial outline. The next stage will be to flesh these out with academic texts.

I recognise the general outline from my GCSE and more recent reading, and can see what the broad debates are but my main thoughts/concerns are:

1. Ive gotten used to looking at the path to war from the German perspective, with Britain etc. just reacting to what Hitler did next. I need to shift the focus on this.

2. The notes felt a bit bitty and it wasn't easy to keep the chronology of events in my head. One thing that I am going to have to do down the line is develop some sort of chronology with all the factors shown.

The next stage is to take notes on Alan Farmer's Britain: Foreign & Imperial Affairs 1919-39.

New Unit - Britain & Appeasement 1919-40

After clearing the decks of other things, I can now start on the second unit of the AS: Britain & Appeasement. Unlike Russia, some of this material is familiar to me from my reading on WWII and (in a hazy way) my GCSE.

The notes in the ICS folder are brief and don't really flow together, so - as with the Russia unit - my plan is to rely mainly on A Level texts and then more general texts. I'm hoping to have this unit completed by May and then I can have the summer to work on the coursework and some research from the dayjob - assuming I still have one by then.