Homework Seven : Hardware exam question review

Homework is due on Thursday 6th December 2012.

This is a very critical homework, knowledge is only part of the game at A level, you are expected to know things, but what they are actually focused on testing is can you apply that knowledge to specific contexts. It is the context that cannot be predicted, they can make these up till the cows come home. They will always stick to the topics we cover but they will come up with new questions to ask about those topics so exam technique is important. You need to go back through the hardware homework questions (homework 5), with the mark scheme answers. You need to look at each question individually, so organise a report in this way (question by question). When doing this task you need to be honest with yourself, there is no point kidding about why you scored what you scored.

Highlighted mark scheme answers are here they are also on the F451 page of the Intranet.

For each question look at the following:

If you did well

• What specifically did you do/have you done to achieve this result?
• Look at the mark scheme why are the other answers given the correct ones? (look at the context of the question and  how they fit with it)

If you scored poorly or loosely

• Look at the mark scheme why are the answers given the correct ones? (look at the context of the question and  how they fit with it)
• Why did your answers not give you the marks? (were they off topic, did they not target the question asked, did you waffle, were you vague, did you start with a statement before explaining, did you state and not describe etc...)
• What mistakes did you make with your approach to the question? (did you read it before answering or did you assume you knew what the question was, did you read your answers back to check you were answering the question asked etc...)
• What will you do on future questions in order to ensure you don't make these same mistakes?

Once this task is complete I will ask you to enter a target into the Nilpit system under ILP (Individual learning plans) outlining what you need to do in future when tackling exam questions.

Homework Six : User Interfaces, Logic and Testing

The homework for next week due on 28th November 2012 consists of 2 exam questions.

Homework 6 link

Do not attempt these as exam questions, make use of your notes and read things up on the Intranet and do not leave this till Wednesday night to attempt as you will not tackle it using all available resources.

The first questions asks you to design a User Interface for a quiz game and also organise the storage of the high scores for the game. Make sure you pick appropriate data types and sizes for each.

The second question about football scores involves writing an algorithm in part (b), based on one given and explained. think about how you'll do this on scrap paper first. You will notice that the algorithm looks like it is written in Visual Basic, so use you VB knowledge when tackling this question, You will need to use an IF statment with an ELSE to accomplish your task. Think carefully about what you are trying to cover before writing the code.

In part (c) of the question you are asked about black box testing, this is in the 3.1.2 Software notes A-L, also you can look this up on the Internet as well.

The final part asks you to design a report, reports are generally printed so don't place quit buttons etc... in the layout.