A' Level Results Day

We'd like to congratulate all of our Amazing Grades users receiving their A' Level results today. Well done! It's another year of increasing success for the nation's students and we hope that Amazing Grades has been part of your achievement this year.

Many of you will be considering taking a Gap Year. Did you know amazing-grades.com has an excellent 'Gap Year Guide'with information ranging from travel guides, planning your trip, volunteering whilst abroad and learning whilst you're away.

Our 'What Next?' section includes careers advice links as well as some information about clearing. As always there are tonnes of useful resources to supplement the excellent work the BBC does around results time.

So again, well done and good luck with whatever next steps you take!

The Amazing Grades Team

New Amazing Learning site now live

Check out the new Amazing Learning web site, it's just gone live this afternoon.



With a sleeker look and feel, you’ll find up-to-date information on our current tools and applications and it’s even easier to buy our products online.

Enjoy!

Views on Amazing Learning

Here at Amazing Learning we like to road test our products as well as future employees. What better way than to give opportunities to young people keen to gain some work experience and find out a little more about Amazing? Recently a very bright intern worked with us for two weeks. Ashley was stunningly productive and insightful and many of the things we're now working on come from Ashley's work and comments from his peers and other Amazing Grades users.

We asked Ashley to distil his thoughts in a blog post so here it is...

Hi,

My name is Ash and I spent 2 weeks on my work experience at the Amazing Group from Cramlington Community High School. I thought id write a blog entry to tell you what its like at Amazing Learning and my comments on the products.

I started my placement with Amazing Learning on the 12th June 2008. I had no idea who I was going to be working with when I arrived at the Amazing Group, but I was then introduced to the Amazing Learning team, these guys were extremely welcoming and within the first 10 minutes I felt comfortable in the surroundings. I was taken on a tour of the building by Kevin and he introduced me to a number of other people in different departments. After that first stage it was straight back down to the floor I would be based for this first week, prior to my arrival my own desk and equipment had been set up for me to use with my own accounts and everything I needed. I have to say I was soon put to work, with only sitting down for about 5 minutes I had received an email from Kevin with logins to the Amazing Learning products and to go with that, a list of tasks he wanted me to do in that day.

Throughout the week I spent with Amazing Learning, I didn’t once feel insecure, left out or bored. The people also in the office were always very helpful and friendly, regularly they would ask me if I was getting on okay, if I needed help with anything or they would just engage in a conversation with me. The way to staff reacted to working with a 15 year old for a week really surprised me, I thought they wouldn’t bother with me and just set me off with work – but like I said it was the total opposite! The atmosphere at Amazing Learning is great and I loved it!

Anyway, for the first few days I was given my own login accounts for a number of the products Amazing Learning does and was asked to evaluate and review each one, so I thought it might be useful to include a summary of each product in this blog…

Amazing Grades
This is an educational resource website for both teachers and students. It holds online resources for revision from every subject in the national curriculum and is spread across nearly all exam boards. I found the site quite easy to use and I found the subjects I wished to study for rather quickly, but if I couldn’t find anything I could simply type it into a clear search function located at the top of the site. I would definitely consider subscribing to this product of Amazing Learning if I needed to revise and didn’t want to scrawl through my books, Grades makes revising A LOT more efficient, quicker and stress free as most the resources have some sort of “fun element” to them.

Enterprise Conkers
One of the subjects I am currently studying is Business. I have to say I am confident with most parts of the course that I have covered so far, however when I entered this product and looked through it – it made me recap some of the things I weren’t quite sure about and sure enough, I now know what I need to about those topics…thanks to Enterprise Conkers! Although this isn’t entirely a business focused product, it focuses on helping 'bring out the entrepreneur' in young people. It does this by proving a number of tools such as creating a Business Plan and CV’s. Along with these tools there is one main task which is an enterprise course. This 12 module course has information on all aspects of being and becoming and entrepreneur, also including hints and tips, questions and end of module quizzes. In the future if I need to revisit anything about some business aspects, I will certainly visit Enterprise Unwrapped to guide me with it and I recommend it to anybody who is interested in Enterprise as it is very useful.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of working at Amazing Learning but it turned out that I managed to learn and pick up a number of things. I massively improved my evaluating and reviewing skills as I did a number of these, I improved my communication skills as I was working with different people on different floors, I also improved my knowledge of ICT in general and also found out that working in an office isn’t as tedious as I used to think! I found the week a great learning experience and will remember it for some time.

Top Five Revision Links

With the exam period well underway, here are Amazing Grades' most popular revision links from the last couple of weeks. These sites have been the most popular on the Amazing Grades main site.

Doc Brown's Chemistry Clinic
This site contains notes and tests on most A level topics. An excellent resource for students and teachers.

EMATHS...Resources for teachers and students
Worksheets and other materials for KS3 and KS4. The site also contains starters and funmaths. There is an amazing amount of useful material on this site covering a variety of topics.

Biology notes and revision quizzes
Original, entertaining, interactive biology learning activities. Good clear site, great for revision, with quizzes that could be used for whole-class revision. Highly recommended.

Advanced mistakes
A list of key errors to avoid in A level, Highers and IB, with links to practice sites. Certainly worth avoiding the mistakes if you can!

Nazi Propaganda
A Nazi Propaganda archive at Calvin College which contains very good visual and written material. The site is particularly useful for primary documents (including speeches and Nazi literature), and the associated discussion and explanation. Excellent source for using primary documents to research Nazi policies and propaganda.

We'll post more recommended sites throughout the rest of the exam period. Good luck!

Saint George's Day

This Wednesday is St George's Day. It is England's national day but for most people in the country St George's Day is just another ordinary day: only one in five people living in England know that it falls on April 23rd.

Who was St George?

St. George is the patron saint of England but actually he wasn't English at all. He was born in Turkey around 280, and became renowed for his bravery while serving in the Roman army during the reign of the pagan emperor Diocletian. After converting to Christianity, George left the military to campaign against Rome’s persecution of Christians, but he was imprisoned and tortured in an effort to make him renounce his faith. He stayed true to his beliefs and was eventually beheaded in Palestine, on 23 April, 303.

Saint George and the Dragon

One of the best-known legends about Saint George is his fight with a dragon, dating back to the Middle Ages when the dragon was commonly used to represent evil. The town of Silene in the province of Libya was terrorised by a dragon and its inhabitants had begun to feed the dragon two sheep every day to prevent it attacking them; when the sheep failed, they began to give it one sheep and one man. The king decreed that the human sacrifice should be chosen by lot, a process that continued until the young princess was selected. When George heard about this he rode into the village, slayed the dragon and rescued the princess.

St. George's Day in England

St. George's Day is not a bank holiday and is not celebrated as much in England as other National Days are around the world. In fact, you are more likely to see St Patrick parades in England, celebrating Ireland's National Day, more than you would see any sign of St Georges Day being celebrated. However, in recent years the popularity of St. George's Day seems to be increasing progressively, with more people actively encouraging others to celebrate England, learn more about St George, and raise money for charity.

In the United Kingdom, St. George is also the patron saint of the Scouting movement. Many Scout troops take part in a St. George's Day Parade on the nearest Sunday to April 23.

Fancy taking part in this day of national celebration? Have a look at www.celebratestgeorgesday.com for some ideas on how you can get involved. If you are interested in learning more about St George and his legend, visit these sites:

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/stgeorge.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/saints/george_1.shtml

Safe Searching

The Byron Review on e-safety, published recently, focussed many teachers' and parents' attention on child safety online, detailing the risks and dangers children face when exposed to potentially harmful material through the internet.

The report recommends that search engines such as Google and Yahoo display a “safe search” button prominently on their home page, to filter out adverse content when children search the web. You can check out the report at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview/

We have always taken safe searching seriously and we welcome the findings of the Byron review. amazing grades has its own form of 'safe search'. Every single resource from which our search engine chooses has been hand-picked by a teacher or subject specialist.

We provide links to over 20,000 academic resources that have been vetted and reviewed by our team of teachers, saving time, guaranteeing accuracy and reducing the risk of exposure to harmful content. We have always taken safe searching seriously and we welcome the findings of the Byron review.

We rely on experts to pick our websites, not algorithms.

Edinburgh International Science Festival

Hot on the heels of National Science Week It is the Edinburgh International Science Festival from 25 March to 5 April.

2008 marks the 20th anniversary of the Scotland's biggest science festival.

“Edinburgh International Science Festival is an educational charity which aims to engage all of society in the wonder and value of science and technology.“

The programme is really varied. Amongst the planned activities are: science talks, walks, workshops, exhibitions, film screenings and events taking place at venues throughout the city including the Botanics, the National Museums of Scotland and Wonderama.
The Science Festival is a fabulous place for everyone. For more information on this festival, go to http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk

You can find many science sites using amazing grades. The site has useful resources for Biology, Chemistry, Physical Education, Physics and Psychology.

Writers of the Year Competition 2008

The eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed the following hot link on the front page of amazing-grades. The fifteenth annual Writers Inc Writers-of-the-Year Competition is open for submissions, welcoming prose and poetry in all styles, forms and subjects. There are five categories for the competition in 2008:

• Short Poems;
• Extended Poems and Sequences;
• Short Stories;
• Writing for Children;
• Feature Journalism.

Entries may be on any subject and in any style. Each entry is judged in its own context, regardless of length or content, and all entries will be judged anonymously. It is an international competition with entries accepted from anywhere in the world as long as they reach the organisers before Monday 14 April 2008.

Winners will be invited to read their work or extracts from it at a special Writers Inc event at the Barbican Library in London and there is up to £3,500 in prizes to be distributed at the discretion of the judges.

You can find more information about this competition and search through the many relevant resources for writers on the amazing grades website www.amazing-grades.com