Information and Software Technology 2009

Hey guys – your blogs are really starting to look good; well done! I hope you’re also finding it to be a useful exercise in terms of using a blog otherwise than because I made you!! Here is the Week 5 Challenge where you are challenged about adding links and images to you comments. Enjoy.

This week’s challenges are a great way to get out there into the blogosphere and meet new student bloggers from all over the world…enjoy your travels!

Today  is your oportunity to REINVENT COMPUTERS so they have the features YOU would most like to use… what usual/unusual components would your ideal computer have?

• drink cooler?
• online auto-chocolate order??
• ipod dock???
• ‘parent approaching’ warning mechanism????

Design your computer for the future, hand the design to Ms Williams today, and then come back to this site next week to see if you’re a winner!!

Try these Questions in preparation for our End of Year Exam

Database design

1. List the FOUR major components of a database in ascending order

a) _____________________________________________________

b) _____________________________________________________

c) _____________________________________________________

d) _____________________________________________________

2. Define the term ‘database’

3. Briefly compare a flat file database with a DBMS

4. When would the user need to sort a database?

5. Why would the FIND command be used to locate data in a database rather than using a query language search?

6. How is a relational operator different from a logical query?

7. The data in a database includes the following:

Write the records that would result from the following queries:

a) Size<50kB __________________________________________

b) Breed=Terrier AND Size>40kB __________________________

c) File _Name CONTAINS .jpg OR Breed=Golden

8. What is a FILTER?

digital media

1. What is binary code?

2. How is data digitised?

3. Why is copying digitised data a major advantage?

4. Define the term ‘input hardware’

5. Hardware digitising devices include scanners. Name TWO different types of scanner.

6. Give TWO examples of pointing devices.

7. Explain the two major factors that are important to the choice of hardware for digital media.

8. Digital data can be manipulated transmitted and displayed. Briefly explain the meaning of ‘transmission’ and ‘display’.

9. Draw and label TWO examples of manipulation techniques that may be used with images.

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other blogs and looking at the participant list to find students with similar interests, you might start finding some blogs that you really like.  You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL?  This is where a blogroll comes in handy.

If you look on the sidebar of my blog, you will notice I have certain subheadings such as:

• 2009 bloggers
• links numeracy
• links science
• teacher blogs  

These are all part of my blogroll.  Notice the subheadings or categories are alphabetical beginning with numbers.  So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories.

If using Edublogs, to create the link category headings, go to  links > link category  To add some links such as this blog and your friends blogs, go to links>add new.  Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL.

Just to confuse you and your teacher, there is also another heading called ‘categories’.  This though, relates to the posts you write about.  These categories appear in the header area or at the footer section of your post.

What are your posts mainly about?

• family and friends
• schoolwork
• my interests
• my future 

You might use these as post categories.  If using Edublogs, to set them up from your dashboard go to posts>categories. Why are categories and tags important when writing your posts?  See if you can find out that answer over the next week.

Your challenges this week

1. Add at least 10 blogs to your blog roll.  Make sure you have at least two different categories.
2. When writing posts, begin adding categories. You should only have a few of these – it is like the chapter heading of a book. Go back to your previous posts and change the category.  If writing a post for the challenge, perhaps a category ‘challenge 09′ would be useful.
3. If you have taken part in a previous challenge,  you also need to write a post recommending at least 5 blogs you think students and classes should add to their blogroll.  Remember to give reasons why that blog should be added.
4. If you still have lots of time to do some more challenges, then visit the blog run by last year’s participants.  Leave some comments on the posts and perhaps you will also find some other links for your blogroll. Check out the categories used on this blog in their blog roll.

This week’s challenges

Still got more time to spare this week?  Want to win a competition run by The Edublogger?  Visit this site to read about the competition. There are 16 chances to win a 12 month Edublogs supporter subscription which will allow you to have threaded comments and other plugins.  Check out the conversation between Lauren and Sue in the comments of that post.  Lauren, one of our blogging challenge participants, has already won one of the subscriptions with her post which can be read here.

Visit one of the websites on this post or do as Mr Toft’s class has. You might create a blog avatar to have visible on your blog and create a different one for your user avatar which will be seen whenever you leave a comment on someone’s blog. Remember to save your avatar to your own computer as a jpeg file, then when uploading to your blog use the ‘alternative upload’ in Edublogs especially if you don’t have to crop the image.

Today we’re going to put up a page that will introduce where we live so that visitors to our blog can get an idea of where we are. You’ll need both explanatory text – your own or something you research – and pictures/maps/travel directions. Remember that you are writing to appeal to visitors to your blog.