Luck & Hard Work!

I wish my students the best of the first, but it has to go hand in hand with a great deal of the second part of the above title. When in doubt, use your common sense –  and remember to write complete and sensible answers. See you after the exams!

 

Mrs T

Notes & annotated Spreadsheet

I’m aware that students have a textbook for content guidance, but I’ve also uploaded sets of notes to the blog. Notes are to be found to the bottom right of this entry. I have uploaded an annotated version of the Spreadsheet example. Although your version should NOT be annotated, the annotations are to ensure that you have included everything the exam board expects on this asignment. This is to be found to the left of this blog entry, the first document under ‘Guidance’.

Checking Unit 1 Spreadsheet Project

WJEC have produced an updated (26.03.09) Teachers’ Guide for AS and A Level.  I’ve lifted out part of the the section clarifying the spreadsheet work from Unit 1:

The context for the task in 2009/2010 is ‘business modelling’.  Care must be taken to ensure an appropriately demanding task is undertaken which addresses the features listed below.

Candidates will be given credit when providing practical evidence from their task to support their answers in the written examination. Candidates should produce a spreadsheet workbook which contains evidence of;

• worksheets showing labels, data, formula

• multiple sheets and the use of 3D referencing between them

• lookup or vlookup or hlookup tables

                drop down list boxes

                spinners for data entry

                logical True or False or Tick Boxes or Option boxes

• startup user interface

• validation techniques and error messages produced

• sorting techniques

• Search for specific criteria

• Control buttons should be used to initiate macros.

• Appropriate use of graphs such as bar or column graphs, line graphs, pie charts, scatter graphs, pictographs

Candidates should be familiar with the following formulas / standard functions:

A	B
SUM COUNT MAX MIN AVERAGE RAND	SINGLE IF MULTIPLE IF DATE ROUND

and should include evidence of at least two formulas or standard functions from list A and two from list B in their workbook.

Simulation Modelling

 Candidates should understand and be able to discuss the following;

• Definition of a simulation model.

• Uses of simulation modelling for weather forecasting, car crash analysis and financial forecasting.

• Advantages and disadvantages of using simulation models.

• Issues relating to hardware used for simulation modelling, including parallel and distributed processing.

Page 15 of the Teachers Guidance focuses on the type of questions which could be asked of the Spreadsheet Modelling task and Pages 16 – 22 shows an example of the evidence students should produce.  Today in class, we are going to look at this exemplar and check off all the elements which your completed projects should include.

Coursework and Practical work deadlines

Unit 2 coursework must be handed in to me on or before Friday 8th may. Unit 1 practical work must be handed to me on Monday the 11th May for checking. This means that you have approximately two weeks left in which to complete the work.

Unit 1 Spreadsheet Task

We’ll be working through the textbook “Advanced Spreadsheet Projects in Excel” by Mott & Rendell for this Unit. It is Section B on the Unit 1 Paper. Section A is based on content. Once we have worked our way quickly through this book, we will have completed everything which is required to produce the Spreadsheet Evidence.

I’ve added 4 new pieces of guidance and exemplars to the widget to the left  of the blog.

1. Spreadsheet Evidence.

2. Unit1 Exemplar Exam

3. Spreadsheet Guidance 

4. Exam Guidance U1

Please get on with this work now.

Housekeeping

With only a very short lesson this morning, we’ll be doing some necessary housekeeping. We need to finalise the Unit 2 coursework, discuss exam schedules, study leave and possible revision and extra work sessions – as well as introduce the next unit of study – Unit 1.

This unit consists of all the content we covered at the start of the academic year, (with a little more to cover on the theory aligned to databases) and a spreadsheet project. We’ll be covering both of these in the lessons in the next four weeks.

Holiday

I hope students are enjoying the holiday. The class time for the work on WJEC Unit2 has come to an end, and these projects need to be handed in on the first day back at school in April. This is because we have to start the Spreadsheet work for Unit1. I will post up this guidance in the next couple of days, so that students can gain an idea of what is required. Having done the IAM Intermediate Online Award in Year 10, students don’t need a new course on spreadsheets, but I’m posting a link to a good series of tutorials on the 2007 Excel format.  

I’d like students to go through some of the initial tutorials as refreshers, but to also take a look at the VLOOKUP function, Conditional formatting, and Pivot Tables. This is presuming that students are already familiar and comfortable with Spreadsheet Functions in general.

I hope those of you on the Peru training trip in Scotland will have had an excellent and enjoyable trip!

Embedding Sound

Trying to download music and sounds from Web 2.0 resources proved to be tricky today. So, its going to be best to record, store and then insert our own into the presentations. Decisions as to which original music or sounds are appropriate need consideration. Students should follow the guidance as to how the evidence for embedding sound needs to be written up.

Creating a video

Today we’re going to try some VERY simple movie production and editing. We’re possibly not going to be using the limited features of the Digital Blue camcorders, but they’re a handy device to start off with.

A series of tutorials links are available on my delicious as well as a quick tutorial and instructions for use.

Animations

It appears that students don’t really like the ‘clumsy’ look of Scratch animations and are going to create these in Flash instead. As such, I’ll have a look at the animations at the start of next week. 

Please remember that in order to get the advanced marks, one has to produce an animation of THREE frames or commands. WJEC guidance states that students will get 2 marks for animation, one for an original and one for a more complex one:

Mark 1. Use of original animation / Flash graphics
Simple animation such as
-3d Textmaker
graphic e.g. wordart
grows and shrinks
or
-simple ‘flash type animation
(two commands) e.g. create ball then make ball bounce
or
-simple 2 frame animation in photo editing software
NB animated Gifs not produced entirely by the candidate gained no marks.

Mark 2. More complex graphical animations
As above but with at least 3 frames or commands
NB animated Gifs not produced entirely by the candidate gained no marks.
You must show your evidence of construction.