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Warning to year 11s (1 Viewer)

user

Old enough to know better
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Jul 28, 2002
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SDD is a lot harder to BS in IPT, because the BS in IPT is a lot more generalised. Sure, the questions in SDD are specific...but perhaps a bit too specific for the marks they allocate?

It's all part of the New HSC conspiracy, they're trying to make a course that's practical, hence all the scenarios. If they want to test our practical skills, why don't we just submit all our major works or something?

They're trying to test how well students apply skills they're meant to have learnt in class. We don't learn anything in class. We sit there on the computers, we try to program something, half the time it fails, or we run out of time and the project never gets finished.

And that was what was tested in the exam. There was a disappointing amount of study actually required in the SDD 2002 exam. Let's go through the exam, dissect it bit by bit from section II onwards.

21.
a. Project management. I don't know about everyone else, but that was part of our major work
b. Applications of social and ethical issues. Sure, you could sit around memorising all the social and ethical issues, but why bother when a scenario like this is given? All you got to do is put yourself in the shoes of a Labor Unionist, and write down what you think they will complain about. Social and ethical issues can be easily made up, and it's useless memorising them because they differ from scenario to scenario.
c.
i. and ii. Context and DFDs were part of the major work, and were covered in the preliminary course.
iii. Project work (am I mixing up my syllabuses again) and communication skills. Unless you live in a hole in the ground or have your head up a hole, you should all be experts at communication. A rephrasal of that question would read, "apply all the creative skills you have learnt in English here."

22
a. Software Development approaches were part of the preliminary course (were they? I seem to remember doing a lot of RADing and CASEing)
b. Feasibility studies are another word for logic. This is covered in the IPT course, and everyone wouldhave done a feasibiltiy study with their major works
c.
i. Storyboards more practical stuff.
ii. Screens. By now, you should know what a good screen looks like. It's just logic and design skills and how well you can draw. I had pretty trains and people catching trains on mine.

d. Easy! The people with no hands. Besides, if they're blind, how would they find the ticket machine in the first place?

e. Write an algorithm. More practical skills.

23. Question 23 was really crap and I really don't want to look at that again, so let's skip it.

Where were all the one mark "identify" low level blooms taxonomy questions? (Multiple choice don't count)

On another note, I would also like to publicly apologise to my SDD teacher for everything bad I've ever said about him. He taught us everything we would have needed to know for the test. Nothing. The few measly pages of notes we got in class, the few VB projects we did at the beginning of the year, and then the major work. Yes, that was all we actually needed to know for this test.

Therefore, as a word of caution to next year's year 12, who have already taken our spot at the pedestal, don't make the same mistake that we all did. Don't study for software design and development.
 

kmb3asv3

New Member
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Jul 6, 2002
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4
hahahaha...well more or less, our teacher taught us a lot of "nothing" that would get us good marks in the HSC, oh well, since we started the HSC syllabus, i think NO ONE has ever been successfully coping with the work, for the trials out of 33 people, about 25 failed so that explains whats going on...

BOS ppl :chainsaw:
 

Morgues

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Jul 6, 2002
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Especially if you are doing IPT as well, there was nothing in the exam between multiple choice and option topic, apart from algorithms (that you just have to figure out on the spot), that couldnt be answered with IPT knowledge
 

user

Old enough to know better
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isn't that a good thing? it's like (content /2 ) * ambiguity + algorithms
 

ske

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Oct 23, 2002
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sydney
yeah i rekon they should mark our major projects too...i spent so much time on that bullshit and everyone ends up with full marks...sucha waste of time...i rekkon they should give ppl a choice..like..either submit ur major work incl all tha bs like dfds or sit a boring exam...that way itll be eezier..coz i dunno about u ppl but the onli work we did was the major project..the rest was playin slime volleyball in class (if attendin class at all)...im gonna miss software!! :rolleyes:
 

FatAsss

New Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
11
YES, WARNING TO YEAR 11's
Dont do this course. Its off the topic.

The BOS seems to have no idea about actual computing science and jumps around to all different social and ethical issues and is more a management exam.

It consists mainly of remembering acronyms and management techniques.
Oh and a few simple search and sort algorithms.

When are the bos going to grow up and actually put some relevant material in the syllabus.
Prelim:
basic coding
using of libraries
creation of libraries
intro to object orientated
HSC:
further object orientated
search sort
encryption, decryption
assembly (real stuff, not that crap we do now)
+options, the ones now are ok, but they need to be refined of that damn contextual approach crap
"Compare and contrast character representation in ASCII and hexadecimal"
Its completely obvious that this was written by an invalid, compare a standards board to base-16 numbers.... yeh.

and why do they make us spend half the year on a major project only to have it worth nothing
SDD should go the way of D&T and art, with a major project being a substantial part of the external assessment, judges etc.
 
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