Just a very quick blog to help some of the students who may have sat the DEB Mock Exam this year. My own students had a mixed reaction to the paper, with some excellent work evident in the booklets, but also with others who struggled to get to grips with certain elements of the paper (particularly timing of their essays, it seems). I think I’m getting a bit better at setting these papers, but with such a small ‘sample size’ to go on (only 2 actual past papers), it’s a real challenge…

I’m a big fan of the “One-Pager” – everything you can get down onto one single revision page. The goal is to include some of the key concepts, some of the key data, and also an opportunity to formulate their “I Sentences” to show the examiner that they can see the impact (or footprint, as I like to call it) of some of the big concepts we examine.

The longer (50 Mark) question in the ‘Data-Based Question’ in the DEB mock paper was on ‘Media Origination’, and ‘Citizen Journalism’ in particular. So below is my ‘one-pager’ on Citizen Journalism to help students to get their head around the topic. I’m also including two newspaper articles on Citizen Journalism that students could try to incorporate into their own revision to help them to form their opinion. One is in favour of CJ, the other against. See where you fit on that spectrum after you’ve had an opportunity to do a bit of reading, research and learning. (For those of you that get really hung up on this kind of stuff, it refers to some of the sub-headings in Learning Outcome 2.6)

Citizen Journalism KH

Citizen Journalism contrasting opinions

I hope the mock results are favourable, but remember, there’s a lot of progress that can be made in the intervening 3 ½ months!

Back to the corrections!

Jerome