I Should Be Marking

Today I took a trip up to Newcastle for my official ICT GCSE 2010 session with OCR (and am still on the train back as I type this up, so my thoughts haven’t had long to formulate yet). On first glance I was equally taken with the WJEC and OCR offerings and much less impressed with AQA and Edexcel. My HoD had similar thoughts and expressed a preference for OCR – so off I popped.

The course leader was not an OCR salesman as I expected, but was a teacher from the chalkface who is employed by OCR (so yes, still a salesman – but not the detached type I was expecting).

I won’t go through the finer details, but the session had positives and negatives for me. Amongst the positives were a clarification on what is meant by ‘controlled assessment’ (I’ll comment on whether I think what I learned was positive in my next post I think, but the fact it was clarified is good) and a little more detail on each of the units that will be run. Amongst the negatives, I didn’t learn *much* beyond what was in the documentation already available. The course leader appeared to be explaining what was already there with a few insider tidbits – so a course for the moderately pro-active really.

There was quite a bit of discussion from the delegate side of the bench about the 2nd exam (B053 for those in the know) which apparently is being organised by the examiner of the current OCR Spec B course. As such, we will get a pre-release document each September in preparation for the January and June exams that will have a bullet point list of areas to explore (10 on the exemplar provided). The exam will then expect students to have researched those topics, but if you have a different interpretation of the somewhat vague bullet point (e.g. the use of Web2.0 technologies to facilitate the creation of shared resources) then your students could find themselves in bother. A couple of people described the exam papers as being ‘off the wall’, while the course leader described the examiner as a ‘blue sky thinker’ (I can already hear the grumblings from the TES forumites).

Overall – I like that there is a coding unit. I like that we won’t have to do 4 identical (but different) coursework projects, that we will be given problems rather than having each student invent their own and that whether you choose Multimedia or Coding – you don’t have to do the whole bloody course in MS Office (or OOo).

Sadly, there is still coursework I mean ‘controlled assessment’, which will almost undoubtedly require oodles and boodles of screenshots (the course leader was quick to point out that is states ‘evidence’ – but it’s hard to see what other evidence OCR and QCA will be willing to accept). But then, you can;t have everything…

I remember that as part of my PGCE I had to write a document to describe common misconceptions that students have in ICT lessons. I don’t remember what I wrote, to be honest, but I’m sure that I wrote it from my perspective and didn’t actually ask the kids – just based the document on my own observation.

Fast forward a couple of years and I started using the (free & excellent) Yacapaca KS3 assessments to baseline our Year 7 students as they entered the school. I used this to generate an apporximate level for each student – but didn’t delve too much into the specifics.

Fast forward another couple of years and I finally decided to delve a little deeper into the question-by-question analysis that is available. 20 minutes later and I had a list of common misconceptions based on the students’ answers, rather than my own ubsubstantiated observations. For every shocker listed below there was another question that was answered well and I haven’t included particularly difficult or unfair questions (such as how many managed to identify the correct HTML syntax for a mailto hyperlink).

Before I show you my findings, what does this mean? Well, first of all it is not meant as any kind of attack on our Y7 pupils or on the primary sector. It is what it is, and I am sure that my school is far from unique in our results. We are a very successful school with a largely affluent intake (>99% of students have an Internet-connected computer at home), so there is no shortage of access to equipment. I see it as an indication of the level we need to be aiming at as we start KS3.

Next time you tackle a spreadsheet unit, think about your language. If over 70% of the class don’t understand the term ‘profit’, then how can you expect them to create a formula to calculate it?

So here is the list:

18% of students thought the best way to copy a real photograph was to cut and paste.

54% of students thought that a table of data would be a better graphical aid than a colour coded diagram.

66% of students misunderstood the differences between cut & paste and copy & paste.

22% of students thought a database is a program for writing documents.

18% of students thought that a DTP package would be suitable for sending emails.

16% of students thought a joystick could be used to copy a photo onto a PC.

60% of students were unable to identify ‘fields’ and ‘records’ in a database table.

36% of students thought that a search engine would find files within their own workspace.

56% of students thought that the word count, spell checker or grammar checker would be a useful tool for improving the layout of a page. [Correct answer: print preview]

44% of students thought that a printer, scanner or speakers were required to access the Internet.

49% of students thought that a spreadsheet, word processor or database would be used to design a flyer [11%, 27%, 11%].

67% of students were unable to recognise a decision in a flowchart.

48% of students thought that ‘including lots of animation and music’ is an important factor in web design. [On a personal note: AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!]

Only 22% of students thought that most important way to ensure that a business website will be useful would be to obtain a list of requirements from the staff.

Only 41% of students correctly identified that a web designer would need an Internet-connected PC. 25% suggested a high quality printer, 21% suggested a plotter and 13% suggested datalogging equipment.

68% of students thought that a flashing light, buzzer or monitor was an input device.

72% of students failed to identify that the primary benefit of a financial model was to try different prices.

38% of students thought that too much text or too many hyperlinks would significantly slow a website down, rather than too much multimedia content.

50% of students failed to identify which fields to search in a database table.

79% of students failed to recognise formulae as a spreadsheet tool used to make predictions.

76% of students were unable to identify the definition of ‘profit’.

52% of students failed to identify a database as the best tool for storing details of inventory.

25% of students thought that the total costs and income would need to be calculated BEFORE being entered into a spreadsheet model.