[Year 12 Its] New kid on the block

Fri Nov 10 21:11:40 EST 2006

Hi Mark,

 Welcome to the IT Systems soon to be Software Development family .

 You can find exams going back to 1993 on the ITS site at edulists. 
solutions are also supplied or offered by one or more teachers.
I don't know about conventions, but I use Section A Q 5)a) when I am 
referencing a question, but feel free as B13 is fine too as far as I'm 
concerned.

 You too will have to get used to some unfortunate wording in exam questions 
in this subject as I have vented my frustration more than once about this. 
If you have time to trawl archives around November/December from last year 
you can see some of my analysis of the exam.

  Section B  Q 13

  Not a pretty way of asking about parallel implementation.

  Very confusing. But I guess it is not impossible to run both systems in 
one nursery at the same time but one would have to dominate in the event of 
conflict with fancy electronics or is this fanciful ?
What about XOR electronic gates where if the inputs are different act on the 
dominant one such as input A ( this being the new system ). If (A xor B ) 
then if (A) act else do nothing. Log all outputs.
An override is sort of implied in the Case Study insert where if the 
temperature gets too high, shade curtains are closed regradless of light 
level --  even though poor light should open the shade curtains --  and in 
the event of extreme conditions mist sprayers come on even if humidity is 
above 80% ( which would normally shut down the mist sprayers). It could make 
for a fine mess.
 Then again, this could be the first time we have seen a question where a 
parallel implementation is for all intents and purposes not practical or 
possible as opposed to not desirable. Not sure.

Section B Q 17
 Another poorly worded question. Your interpretation is the right one. The 
emphasis is on the "happening" and not the recording .

What about Section A Q 9 ?
   What is a large network ? Large number or nodes or large geographic 
spread ?
If it is large number of nodes, you use a core switch and group switches to 
segment traffic away from the backbone and not a router. To use a router 
adds inefficiency as it is slower. You will create additional networks and 
routers sit at borders of networks and not within networks. You will have to 
change your addressing scheme and create more work to implement a collection 
of sub networks rather than segmenting the one network.
  If it is a large geographic area, you don't use a router to run more 
efficiently either. You improve the media and the switches.
 I am not happy most of the time with the networking questions but I am 
happy to hear from others on this.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  If you have whetted your appetite for more poor wording questions try
  VCAA Exam 2005 Section B Q 10 :
        Input devices are mouse, keyboard or touch screen. Does that mean 
keyboard without mouse ????  or mouse without keyboard ?  Are we using a 
virtual keyboard on screen ? or is it keyboard and mouse OR touch screen ?
    and Q 11:

  The speed of a guest booking into the hotel must be reduced by 30% on 
average.
It should have read "increased" by 30% as you are building a new system to 
speed things along.

and Q12  -- see the suggested answers
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Best wishes

Kevork Krozian
Mailing List Creator and Administrator
kevork at edulists.com.au
www.edulists.com.au
Tel: 0419 356 034

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kelly" <kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
To: "is" <is at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 11:34 AM
Subject: [Year 12 Its] New kid on the block

> Hi all.  Next year I'm taking IS/SoD (or whatever fond abbreviation will 
> be used) for the first time.
>
> I've just had a look at the 2006 IS exam to get a feel for things.
>
> Do IS people do exam post mortems?
>
> Anyway, some ignorant thoughts...
>
> One small quibble is the spelling of Shneiderman  I too only found out 
> this year that there's no "c" after the "s".  (source - 
> http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben)
>
> A2b and B10a refer to a "type of network".  I find the word "type" 
> ambiguous: does it mean LAN/WAN or P2P/Client-server , or indeed 
> "Ethernet"?
>
> BTW - Do IS teachers have a protocol for referring to exam questions ... 
> specifying the section, question number and subquestion's letter? I hope 
> you can understand which questions I'm referring to in the para above.
>
> B13 - Is it my imagination or is the first dotpointed implementation 
> option (running both systems at the same time) basically impossible? How 
> could 2 different control systems run the same system at the same time 
> without causing chaos?  Or is that what the kids were supposed to point 
> out?
>
> B17 - again, maybe it's my imagination or ignorance, or are objectives 2 
> and 3 mututally exclusive.  How can no more than 2 errors per month be 
> recorded (objective 2) AND record all errors (objective 3)?  Something 
> fishy?
>
> Does objective 2 mean "no more than 2 errors per month will HAPPEN"? 
> Otherwise, objective 2 as it stands means "Only record the first 2 errors 
> and ignore all the others"!
>
> Cheers
>
> Mark
>
> -- 
> Mark Kelly
> Manager - Information Systems
> McKinnon Secondary College
> McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
> Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
> School Phone +613 8520 9000  <<< NEW NUMBER
> School Fax +613 95789253
>
> Webmaster - http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
> IT Lecture notes: http://vceit.com
> Moderator: IPM Mailing List
>
> There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary
> and those who don't.
>
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