I have a few Y13 students who are resiting their Unit 2 (G041) paper in January (OCR Applied GCE ICT). They have been panicking a bit and wanted to do some past papers. The issue is that Section A is based on a case study and changes everytime, so lack of time means that’s out of the window. Therefore they can only practice the section B which is generic info about ICT and business. I have set up a small Edmodo group for them and have been sharing hints and tips for passing the exam as well as how to write the three main pre-release task. I also decided to create interactive past papers. These papers would enable them to answer different section B questions from past papers and click a submit via email button and I’d get their answers.
Having recently got from school a licenced copy of Adobe CS3 Master suite I had noticed a function called create form. Using Adobe lifecycle design I have managed to create a very simple and rustic interactive past paper. The video below will hopefully show how its done (although it seems to take an age to load! – was my first attempt at jing and think I made it too big – got carried away with my widescreen – updated now – used Camstudio and uploaded to youtube):
When the results are emailed back they come in an xml format. There have been a couple of issues with this…
my school email won’t let me open it
the opened xml file wasn’t the easiest to read
If you have a solution to either it’d be much appreciated… I’ll probably work it out if I RTFM but haven’t got around to that yet. Here is an example of a past paper that I have created. Jun07questionpaper
Functional skills are a fantastic idea. The need to pass a functional skills test in order to get a diploma is a great idea. The need to pass level 2 functional skills test in English, Maths and ICT to get a coresponding A*-C at GCSE is quite scary. The premise is (as far as I have worked out) that for a pupil to get a GCSE in any of the three ‘tool’ subjects (Maths, English or ICT) then they must have passed a functional skills test.
I’m not sure on the impact of this on the two core subjects, but for ICT it all depends on what you deliver at KS4 and whether you are offering a Diploma. OCR Nationals & DiDA are not ‘true’ GCSEs so are therefore exempt from the need to have functional skills… Therefore I can foresee a massive increase in the number of schools offering those 2 options and ditching the GCSE.
However, back to my first statement…’Functional skills are a fantastic idea’. I believe this to be the case. The reason being is that our kids are, in general spoon fed. They get help with coursework, how to write exam answers, essays etc… But, when they try to transfer skills from one subject area to another there seems to be issues. Many a time I have seen pupils using PowerPoint inappropriately in an English lesson and I am quite sure that our pupils fail to write ‘persuasively’ in an ICT lesson…
What to do next is my next dilema. Having been on a recent launch for functional skills and seen the amount of money the government is throwing at it, functional skills look like they are here to stay. Having had a few chats with our Deputy Head I reckon our best bet is to get all pupils to take the functional skills test in Yr 9. This will mean that any pupils doing ICT GCSE or a diploma will already have deomonstrated their ICT functionality before starting their new courses. Also think we will go with the Welsh board, have heard good things about their assessment… will trial it next year.