MyPoints.ie, a new online portal for Leaving Cert students, may be a welcome resource for stressed-out students sitting their State exams today.
Created by two mothers of fifth-year students, MyPoints.ie aims to assist students from fourth year onwards who are preparing for their final secondary school examinations.
Presented in a modular dashboard format (think iGoogle), the site pulls together the best the web has to offer Leaving Cert students into a single online portal that aims to be fun, functional and accessible.
As well as key information for students (including an exam timetable, subject curricula, prior-year Leaving Cert statistics, study tips, a points calculator and career guidance), the site features live feeds from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google News, and even Pinterest and Instagram, bringing together social content about the exams coming from students themselves, as well as other sources.
An all-in-one resource
Not just for the 56,800 Leaving Certificate students starting their exams today, MyPoints.ie is aimed at students from transition year upwards, as well as their parents, guardians and teachers.
The site’s founders were inspired when they found the multitude of online resources for Leaving Cert students to be overly complex, boring and lacking a student focus.
“As parents, we were frustrated about how difficult it was to find relevant information on the Leaving Cert,” said Deirdre O’Driscoll, co-founder of the site. “Thanks to MyPoints.ie, parents can now be very well informed about the Leaving Cert structure, go online with their sons and daughters to discuss career options and keep up with the latest news. At the same time, students can converse with other students, keep abreast about what’s trending on social media and get career advice all on one amazing website.”
Relevant for today’s students
The goal of the MyPoints.ie dashboard is to provide current, useful information to students, while filtering out anything irrelevant.
No doubt the high level of social media integration will appeal to today’s tech-savvy students, and this key component has been driven by Ronan Kenny, an architect and web designer who built the site. Live feeds make the site a living, three-dimensional social media experience.
“MyPoints.ie is not your typical brochure-style website. It’s designed to be fun, interactive and informative – and it’s all for free,” said O’Driscoll. “We believe students will drop in and out to the site over the course of their two-year or three-year Leaving Cert preparation to browse the social media feeds, take one of the free career guidance tests or figure out how to apply for college and university scholarships.”
Student exams image via Shutterstock
