I have updated our Glow Learn area and added all of the learning objectives to the topics.
I will split the notes up to smaller chunks to better match up to the objectives.
I have updated our Glow Learn area and added all of the learning objectives to the topics.
I will split the notes up to smaller chunks to better match up to the objectives.
The lesson today was the first in over 2 weeks. We have had very bad snow in Scotland and this has resulted in a lot of missed work. The class were reminded about Scholar, Glow and other resources.
The class was sorted into friendship pairs and I issued sample coursework to the pairs. One half of the room had candidate 2 and the other candidate 3. The pairs were to discuss the coursework given out and look at the example to find out if it was a good or poor candidate. Both example students had passed the coursework task when it was given but one had scrapped a pass and the other had achieved 58/60. We swapped sheets and took notes about what is expected during the coursework.
The class has had some problems with glow so we undertook a sample homework assessment to make sure that the class could submit the homework for Tuesday on time. Scott Brown scored full marks in the sample homework.
Homework will be posted in Glow tonight.
A reminder to pupils that the scholar website has a range of materials and assessments that you should be using to improve your subject knowledge.
I have list of all the pupil access to Scholar, there is a surprising number of pupils who have not been making use of this site. I will discuss this in class today. I have no wish to name and shame pupils that have not been using the site, however, the information is available.
Please use this resource
I have added a new page to the Glow group that has previous coursework tasks. It was my intention last week to start looking at previous coursework tasks and evaluate what is good and bad.
Obviously the snow has kinda got in the way a big bit so, I would like to to try one of the tasks here. You should find the Computer Systems section straight forward enough but the software development side will be a lot harder. Make sure you stick to the main plan. I have uploaded the unedited PDFs from these years so you can see how the marking schemes are applied. If you do not have VB at home then this link should help.
I have also uploaded some new software development notes into the group.
Please share this message with as many pupils as you can in the class.
A reminder that while you are off you can be accessing all the materials for the course via Glow and Scholar.
You can upload requests and files in the glow group if you want me to look over any thing.
Stay warm and stay safe.
Mr. Stratton
You don’t get away with it that easy.
Homework will be on Glow learn this week.
There are different types of storage devices available, these include…
Magnetic storage devices, that can be fixed or removable. Removable storage devices allow the user to disconnect the device and physically transport data from one one computer to another. Examples of magnetic storage are shown in the image below.
The speed of magnetic storage has improved, with hard disks being used everyday internally and externally in computer usage. Early disks used to have about 3000 revolutions per minute but now it is not uncommon to see hard disks reaching speeds of up to 5400rpm or even better 7200rpm.
Capacity of hard disks have improved tremendously also in the last 10 years. From a mere 10Mb in the 80’s to 8Gb on many of today’s pc’s.
NOTE: Remember when writing about capacity that mb = megabits & Mb = megabytes!
Optical storage devices are used commonly everyday, be it in video games or music cd’s we have all used optical storage at least once. The most common optical storage device is the CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read-Only Memory), which is a read only format which, once written to, cannot be altered. When writing to optical storage, the process is called burning. A high power laser is used to do this. To read the disc however, a low power laser is used – an infrared light is shone onto the disc which contains a long spiral curled round it containing all the data. When the infrared light finds data it reads it and trys to make use of the data.
Here are some examples of optical storage:
CD-ROMs have been overcome by the creation of writeable CDs, called CD-RW. The capacity of CD-ROMs are typically 650Mb. DVDs typically 4.7Gb and Blu-Ray 25Gb all when based on single layer.
Optical storage is usually read only.
Solid State Storage Devices (SSSD) are made up entirely of electronic parts, meaning they have no moving parts. Also known as RAM disks, they can take the place of a magnetic disk as a mass storage device. They can be in the form of a plug-in card or cartridge containing memory chips. SSSD run on Static RAM or Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM. SSSD are ideal if portability is needed as USB is widely used in all formats of computer and memory cards are used to save space in small devices such as digital cameras. Here are some examples of SSSD:
SSSD is great for capacity as it is very cheap. USB flash drives with a 2Gb capacity can cost as little as £3 and external harddrives with up to a terrabyte of space can cost only £50 in some shops.
We began the lesson by talking about writing good blogs which should include graphics, examples, etc. To put images onto the blog you must first download them, and then upload them directly from your PC and do not use URL’s as if the source website changes that image your blog post will also change. Another improvement to blogging is to re enter your blog and tag it so other users will be able to find relative information to their query. We got told that the documentation is very important in software development and that we need to write about every stage in detail as it is needed to gain a good mark. All the course notes were given out last week and if you didn’t receive them you should contact your computing teacher. These are also needed to have good preparation for the upcoming prelim after the Christmas break. Also the course work task is coming up in about 3 week’s time. We finished off interfacing but will come back to it at any opportunity as it is touched on in many SQA Higher Papers. We also discussed the USB and USB2 interfacing in addition to this. This relates to Apples FireWire which is a copyrighted part of their business. We then started on wireless networking, talking about mobile networking in the past, blue tooth (a personal area network that works within 10 meters of the device) and Infrared etc. A wired network is much more secure than a wireless network as hackers can simply connect to a wireless network easily if it is not password protected whereas a wired network would require a cable into the system. Different devices operate on different frequencies to stop interference thus radio stations need to buy their frequency to stop two stations being the same so you can select which one you want to listen to without hearing the rest. As many people have Bluetooth the two devices that are wanted to interact with each other must be synced. Since they are synced they can change their frequency often (lots of times a second) to avoid interference with other devices. Notes on advantages of blue tooth can be found in topic 4.6.8 on page 100. There is a chance of interference in devices connected wirelessly so keyboards, mouse’s, etc are more secure if wired especially if in use in schools, offices and other crowded places with lots of computers. After this we searched the internet for wireless devices that uses clever interfacing and ways of connecting. Some found were wireless headphones, keyboards, mouse’s, phones and various devices.
Homework was issued and is available on the Glow Scotland website.
This is a reminder that I am looking for a logo for the site. Don’t make me use my photoshop skills, you wouldn’t like my “creations”
There is no need for photoshop you can use any package you wish as long as the final output is JPG. Check out the following GIMP Tutorials for some free ideas.
Another idea might be to use minecraft or a game mod like Gary’s Mod to create a logo.
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