[Year 12 IT Apps] ITA exam - B10b (i)

Thu Nov 7 10:27:00 EST 2013

Remember that what is in the textbook is not gospel, and the study design
does not mandate detailed working knowledge of PHP, PERL etc (unless you
count it as being buried under "software requirements for setting up
websites" in U3O1 KK4.)

It doesn't even expect students to know the most fundamental concepts of
HTML or CSS !

*Warning - rant coming up...*

And while I'm on the matter, I think that in the new study design ITA
*should* man up and include basic HTML and CSS knowledge. It would not
encroach upon SD's territory, and it would give students more to do in
exams and SACs than minutely dissecting the definitions of words in
questions.
And some of the mandated definitions themselves are open to dispute, e.g.
the study design says that 'efficiency' includes ease of use, but I would
argue that ease of use is not a productivity issue, it's a quality issue
and should be under effectiveness.

Similarly, the study design dictates that evaluation criteria must be
developed during the design phase of the PSM. Why? It does not make sense.
Solution requirements are determined during analysis.  Why should the
corresponding evaluation criteria not be determined then as well? Why wait
until the solution is being assembled to decide how to determine if it's
going to be a success or not?  Yet every year, kids are grilled on when
evaluation criteria are determined. It's not like medical school where
there are jolly good reasons for doing things a particular way: several ITA
key knowledge dotpoints are largely a matter of opinion by VCAA and should
not be examined as if they were fundamental laws of nature.

The VCAA format of ERD diagrams is a case in point - it seems totally
arbitrary. The choice of the Chen style is arbitrary. Its use of shading to
represent key fields is not only arbitrary, it seems to be a VCAA invention
that you will not find in the real Chen style.  Please set me right on this
point if you know better. Yet students gain or lose marks on their final
exam for whether or not they know this obscure, unconventional formatting
'convention'.

After going through this year's exam carefully, I am getting more and more
worried that ITA is becoming bogged down in intricate questions of subtle
definitions (e.g. what is included under 'function design elements', and
losing the bigger picture of the importance of IT applications (with a
lowercase "a").

Databases are done to death.  The normalisation theory is important to
students to *apply*, but expecting them to distinguish between 2NF and 3NF
is unnecessarily dull and narrow. University students should do that... not
year 12s.
Fortunately, this year's normalisation question was far more reasonable
than that of 2012, but it still wanted students to only apply 2NF.  Why?
 Surely students should aim for 3NF as a matter of course (and by using key
fields for each table, 2NF problems effectively automatically disappear.)

Apart from RDBMS, webpage editors, and possibly spreadsheets, and  what
other software applications do kids study? Nothing. They can get through a
year of studying IT applications any only use *two* applications.  Would
year 12 History: Revolutions feel complete only studying 2 revolutions all
year?
In the past students needed project management software for their
Gantt/PERT charts, and applications like 'Inspiration' for showing the
representation of thinking, but they are gone now.

We're left with databases and webpage editors - and up to 40% of the exam's
marks come from these. See the marking
breakdown<http://vceit.com/p/postmortem-2013i.htm#marking>I worked
out.

- Where is graphics editing? Sure it can be used when making a webpage, but
it's not *required*. Where is theory on picture and video formats? Kids
work every day with JPG, MKV etc but it's nowhere in the key knowledge.
- What about audio? Kids use MP3 all day, but do they know the differences
between it and FLAC? Why could this not be incorporated?
- What about artificial intelligence?
- What about HDD/SSD, USB, SATA, CPU/GPU? Applications cannot run without
them, yet only the OS is mentioned in the study design. The closest we get
to meaty hardware is vague "key hardware and software components"
references relating to networking in U3O1, which could include years of
study (yet only attract one mark for proxy servers in the 2013 exam.)
- What other IT topics or applications do you think should make an
appearance?

*Rant finishes*

I feel better now. I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings, as I usually
seem to do.

Now to pack away the dancing girls and head for the beach. Ah, retirement
can be hard.

Regards
Mark

On 6 November 2013 18:57, Howard, David <dhoward at stmichaels.vic.edu.au>wrote:

>  Hi Mark,
>
>  My only thought so far is that there is a small section in the text book
> about PHP and ASP being used to make web pages dynamic…
>
>  I am glad that I am not marking the exam this year!
>
>  David
>
>   From: Mark <mark at vceit.com>
> Reply-To: Year List <itapps at edulists.com.au>
> Date: Wednesday, 6 November 2013 6:45 pm
> To: Year List <itapps at edulists.com.au>
> Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] ITA exam - B10b (i)
>
>   I'm now feeling that the examiners did really expect kids to say,
> basically, "Type the price into a web page editor with a QWERTY keyboard,
> save the HTML file, and upload it to the web server with FTP."
>
>  Sigh.
>
>
> On 6 November 2013 17:26, Mark <mark at vceit.com> wrote:
>
>>  Hi all. I'm nearing the end of the post mortem, but this is turning
>> into one of the dodgiest ITA exams I've seen in some time.
>>
>>  Take this delight hiding in section B, Q10b part (i)...
>>
>>  "i. Describe how the manager can identify and display on a web page the
>> cheapest fruit available."
>>
>>  I'd like you all to pause for a moment and plan an answer to that in
>> your heads. I'll wait.
>>
>>  Finished? Are you sure?
>>
>>  "Yes, a quick =MIN(C2:C5) formula," you say.
>>
>>  But have you noticed the words "*and display on a web page*"?
>>
>>  Try answering it *now*.
>>
>>  Assuming that someone doesn't just *look* at the price onscreen and *
>> type* it into a webpage manually with a webpage editor, do the examiners
>> want kids to explain some ColdFusion, DDE link, SQL, or PHP code to
>> magically extract a value from a spreadsheet/database and inject it into a
>> dynamic web page?
>>
>> And even if we *did* just use the MIN function, it would only display
>> the *value* of the lowest price, not the *name* of the cheapest fruit...
>> that's an achievable, but very different kettle of fish.
>>
>>  And it's worth all of *2 marks*!
>>
>>  Beyond belief.
>>
>>  I'm dying to see what the examiner's report gives as a model answer...
>>
>>  --
>>
> --
> Mark Kelly
> mark AT vceit DOT com
> http://vceit.com
>
>
> --
Mark Kelly
mark AT vceit DOT com
http://vceit.com

Day 19, I have successfully conditioned my master to smile and write in his
book every time I drool.- Pavlov's Dog
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/itapps/attachments/20131107/c1c5e44d/attachment-0001.html 