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whew, where did those holidays go?? It's not long now...<br>
<br>
Firstly can I just thank all the teachers who attended the PixelEd exam
revision lecture yesterday and/or facilitated their students attending.
Once again, Graeme encapsulated everything that most of us tell our
kids, but with the added authority of being past Chief Examiner. <br>
<br>
A couple of questions came up yesterday and I just want to share with
all:<br>
1) the student exam instructions for 2009 are available at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcaa/vce/exams/examcovers/Oct_Nov_2009/2009vetmm-cov.pdf">http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcaa/vce/exams/examcovers/Oct_Nov_2009/2009vetmm-cov.pdf</a><br>
It's well worth going thru these with your kids. As mentioned
yesterday, during reading time, students cannot write notes or run up
any programs. However, they should bring pen/pencil as paper is
supplied should they want to jot anything down once working time starts.<br>
<br>
2) Your VCE coordinator and computer technician will have the
installation instructions and details. <br>
MS Office and in particular, WORD, <b>cannot</b> be loaded. Any
writing that might need to be done is using notepad or simple text
editor.<br>
<br>
3) I'm no authority on this but as far as I understand the process,
your techie makes a computer image consisting of the allowed programs,
which is very carefully tested beforehand to ensure all programs run
correctly.<br>
On exam day, this image and the exam is deployed to each C drive, under
the exam supervisors instructions. <br>
As the teacher, I am in no way involved in this process.<br>
All computers are then taken completely off the network for the
duration of the exam. When the exam is finished, the techie can connect
back to the network to gather the exams off each C drive...techie needs
to carefully ensure all responses have been gathered before re-imaging
machines back to normal!<br>
<br>
During the exam, if there are problems with individual computers, then
techie may reboot and try again and/or move student to a spare
computer. The student will get any additional time that this process
takes but if they have not been saved prac work, this work and time
would be lost. So remind your kids to save prac regularly and to the
right location - as per the exam instructions. <br>
<br>
If there is a major disaster and all the computers go down, I believe
there is an ultimate fall back of a paper-based exam but don't know if
this has ever been used. Basically, it won't be your problem and there
is nothing you can do, it's up to the exam supervisors, school admin
and VCAA to sort out any hassles, so try not to worry too much!!!<br>
<br>
4) In case your students attended the lecture, there was a bit of
confusion over a couple of the multi choice questions ie 2006-q1, the
answer is C -use a gif to put a limited colour, simple line drawing
logo on a web page and in 2004 q 1 the answer is C kerning is adjusting
the space between individual letters.<br>
<br>
5) Encourage students with A or A+ SACs to enter Top Designs
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/excellenceawards/seasonofexcellence/index.html">http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/excellenceawards/seasonofexcellence/index.html</a><br>
<br>
Happy revision everyone!!<br>
Claire Bloom<br>
Warrandyte High<br>
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