On Thursday 13 May 2004 17:23, Paul Jensen wrote:

Hi Garry.

As a A-level student I did ICT at Sharnbrook Upper School in Beds, and we were taught along the lines of "do an Excel or Access solution", and given books which taught us how to do solutions using these apps.

It's nice to hear that you're able to use different packages for the coursework, I just wonder though how good the quality of the courseworks are, as the AQA marking seems to be predicated on how good (advanced) the solution is, where really I think it should be about how well the solution meets the needs of the end user.

Saying that, the books I was given were by P.M.Heathcote, and I think they were published by Galloway press. It would be great to adapt the material for students doing other projects.

I've talked to the Heathcotes at BETT a few times about things outside of the M$ paradigm and they seemed relatively interested if someone came up with the material and justified the market somewhat. I have been trying to write some work along the same lines (i.e. lots of screen shots) using phpmyadmin and MySQL. It worked reasonably well with a year 10 GNVQ group and I am now in the process of getting it up-graded for my OCR VCE group. The OCR contact said they had no objections to this solution as long as it met the criteria. Paul

>From: garry saddington <garry@joydiv.fsnet.co.uk> >To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com >Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Crocodile Clips >Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 16:48:56 +0100 > >On Thursday 13 May 2004 12:54 pm, Grainge, Derek wrote: > > Hi Garry > > > > > Web projects are notoriously difficult to get high grades in so why not > > > do a database project instead. > > > > At what level? My GCSE students (as default) would do two projects, Web > > and Modelling, for AQA. I'd direct them AWAY from databases as the work is > > more technical / time-consuming for no great benefit. Most marks come > > from the report covering the project development, and so longs there's a > > reasonable level of content the exam board have no axe to grind. I don't > > agree that web projects are 'notoriously difficult' to get good marks in - > > there's plenty scope. > > > > e.g. a website of 8-12 pages, including text, pictures, perhaps other > > media, and an online form which works. Without the last there are criteria > > (data gathering, validation, outputs) which the project can't satisfy. We > > have a spare web server which my students publish on internally to show > > they have done all of that successfully. Perhaps famous last words, but my > > students have been doing that for some years now without complaint. And > > they get good grades. All of which is jumping through hoops, but > > successful jumping. > > > > I would agree that an A2 ICT student (we do OCR) would almost have to do a > > database. They have to do something reasonably complex - which may come > > from integration of products (eg Web site with database back end), or from > > the complexity of the database & the task itself. I guess an equally > > complex spreadsheet involving multiple data sets with relationships between > > them would be satisfactory. But the board have said they're not > > interested in artificially complex solutions to problems. > > > > Derek > > > > >I was only talking A-level and agree with you on all your comments. I was >trying to suggest that there are other ways that you can adapt in order to >use Linux for teaching. >regards >garry > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com >For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com >

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