Facebook founder on ‘fine’ technology exam

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made an appearance on the metalwork and technology exam for 6,000 Junior Certificate students yesterday.

Those taking the higher level exam had the option of writing about his contribution to technology in a paper that Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland subject spokesman Kenny Donagher considered fine for most students.

He said it was good to see the exam feature a topic that young people would be talking about.

The written papers yesterday afternoon were worth a quarter of overall marks for metalwork, and Mr Donagher said there was a nice question for higher-level students on the model vintage car they made for their project earlier in the year.

He said ordinary level students had good time to get through the paper, which should have posed no difficulties to most candidates.

At the same time, Leaving Certificate chemistry students were being examined.

There was a challenging stoichiometry question at higher level about the cleaning of a tarnished silver bracelet, but ASTI’s Ciara O’Shea said the paper was otherwise quite straightforward.

Ms O’Shea was also pleased with the ordinary level exam, citing a roundabout way of asking for the atomic and mass numbers of a hydrogen isotope in part of one question as one of the few difficulties.

Both papers featured nice questions on titration, she said.

Máire Ní Chiarba of ASTI said the Leaving Certificate written Spanish exams were fine but a number of issues caused concern on the listening test.

For example, she said students had a lot of information to take in and then a lot of detail to write, with little time to do so before the audio moved on.

She said there was also conflicting instruction about pauses on the question sheet about an item on the Camino de Santiago walk.

She said the only main difficulty on the higher level written exam was a letter about royalty, but students had a choice to write a conversation instead. For ordinary level candidates, she said questions were pitched at an appropriate standard and there was a reading comprehension about pop star Justin Bieber.

Ms Ní Chiarba thought ordinary level students had a nicer variety of subjects in the reading passages than those at higher level, with pieces about Real Madrid and Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas, Apple founder Steve Jobs, and an update on the rescued Chilean miners featuring.

She said items about butterflies, earthquakes, and glaciers on the higher level exam were far less likely to interest young people, but there were no problems with the written section.