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

Thu Nov 7 10:49:35 EST 2013

Just picking up on the normalisation question (7a):
The '(2NF)' note is pretty much irrelevant (and few 'experts' seem to agree on just how to separate the normal forms) because the requirement is, quite naturally, to have each non-key fully dependent on a key field.  This means that there must be a Boat table and a 'Hiring'. Table. Captain fields can all go into the boat table (1-1 relationship between boat and captain) but the boat hours can't - or each boat could only be hired once.
Tables need to be:
tblBoat: BoatName (key)BoatLocation;  . . . all the rest except BoatHours, because this is not fully dependent on the Pkey; for every boat, there will be many hires (boat hours)
tblHire: HireCode (key - could be autonumber); BoatName (foreign key); BoatHours . . .  and any other hire specifics - date, time . . ..

Anyway, Mark, thanks heaps for all of your hard work (and enjoy that beer!)

Glenda Harper
Educational Leader - Timetable and e-Learning
Carwatha College P-12
harper.glenda.j at edumail.vic.gov.au<mailto:harper.glenda.j at edumail.vic.gov.au>
Ph:   9795 5848
Fax: 9790 1712

From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Mark
Sent: Thursday, 7 November 2013 10:27 AM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] ITA exam - B10b (i)

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<mailto: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<mailto:mark at vceit.com>>
Reply-To: Year List <itapps at edulists.com.au<mailto:itapps at edulists.com.au>>
Date: Wednesday, 6 November 2013 6:45 pm
To: Year List <itapps at edulists.com.au<mailto: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<mailto: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

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