Christmas homework: Yes it does exist

Over Christmas you need to do two things:

Theory reviews

review the theory material we have completed this term.

3.3.1 Operating Systems
3.3.4 Floating point representation
3.3.7 Programming technique
3.3.9 Databases

You need to go onto the Nilpit system and make an entry under the "Target setting: Please record here your personal targets for Computing."

Explaining what specifically you need to target regarding the theory work.

Project research tasks

The tasks that each of you need to perform by the time we get back after Christmas need to be tackled. If you do not complete these tasks then that will push you back on time for completing the project.

You need to go onto the Nilpit system and make an entry under the "Computing Project Record the basic outline of your project here"


Explaining what the research task you need to complete over Christmas entails.

Homework: Database question review

Homework is due on Thursday 20th 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 User Interface homework questions (homework 6), 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 F453 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.