Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Monday, 28 April 2014
Computer systems Input, Output and Disabled Users
What are all the various input and output devices you can use on desktop computers, mobile devices and in technology around your house or school?
What makes them robust and reliable systems?
What are the latest developments in Input and Output Hardware?
Exam Questions
Define a Computer System?
Can you think of examples of places of work where computer systems are not used?
What are the top ten most important computer systems in the UK?
Why is it important that systems are reliable and robust?
Input Devices for Disabled Users
Have you included all these Input Devices in your answer above?
What output devices are there for disabled users?
Finally
Please now click here and work through sections 22 and 23
Thursday, 24 April 2014
Unit5 - Game Authoring
Student Resources
Folder Structure & Eportfolio
Game Overview
Moodboard
- Moodboard Collection Checklist
- Moodboard Creation Checklist
- Moodboard Annotation Checklist
- Full 5 Mark Example
Design It
Build It
Review It
- R1 Example Review1
- R2 Example Review2
- R3 Example Review3 Front Cover Inside Cover
- Review Template
Evidence It
Wednesday, 23 April 2014
Programme Flow Control
Programme Flow Control
Programme Flow Control – What do you need before you start building a boat? You need a plan. You need drawings. You need an idea of what kind of boat it’s going to be and what you want it to do. If you want to sail round the world but you just bang a few planks together and hope for the best, guess who’s going to be shivering in a towel on the beach five minutes later.
So let’s think about how you want to build and manage the programme. This is known as control structured programming, in other words, you’re organising the way in which the programme runs. The more efficient and streamlined a programme is, the faster and more efficiently it will run and the easier it is to troubleshoot if something goes haywire. Ask any IT specialists what they hate most about troubleshooting and they’ll invariably clench their fists, grind their teeth and say “messy code”.
Think clean. Think tidy and organised. Design your programme to run sweetly by using flowcharts, the basic building blocks of good design. Flowcharts give you a visual picture of the sequences you’re writing so that you can plot paths, pinpoint actionable commands and follow the paths of those strings of commands to make sure each one follows on logically from the previous one or follows a logical group structure.
One of the benefits to you of having clean code is that you can group it into sections that can be replicated many times throughout a programme, rather than laboriously typing each string out every time. Knowing that the code is clean means you can slot copies of it wherever you need to, confident that it works, although of course you’ll still be testing constantly right through the design process. At least you know the syntax is correct.
Testing is crucial in the design stage so that you can spot errors before they’re written into the programme. Once you’re confident that the code is good, and you’re building the programme, testing the software is easier, you can foresee problems and adjust the structure before it crashes. An accurate coder saves everyone time and money.
Whole Numbers and Integers
Whole Numbers
Whole Numbers are simply the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... (and so on)
No Fractions!
Counting Numbers
Counting Numbers are Whole Numbers, but without the zero. Because you can't "count" zero.
So they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... (and so on).
Natural Numbers
"Natural Numbers" can mean either "Counting Numbers" {1, 2, 3, ...}, or "Whole Numbers" {0, 1, 2, 3, ...}, depending on the subject.
Integers
Integers are like whole numbers, but they also include negative numbers ... but still no fractions allowed!
So, integers can be negative {-1, -2,-3, -4, -5, ... }, positive {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }, or zero {0}
We can put that all together like this:
Integers = { ..., -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }
Example, these are all integers:
-16, -3, 0, 1, 198
(But numbers like ½, 1.1 and 3.5 are not integers)
Confusing
Just to be confusing, some people say that whole numbers can also be negative, so that would make them exactly the same as integers. And sometimes people say that zero is NOT a whole number. So there you go, not everyone agrees on a simple thing!
My Standard
I must admit that sometimes I say "negative whole number", but usually I stick to:
Name
|
Numbers
|
Examples
|
Whole Numbers
|
{ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }
| 0, 27, 398, 2345 |
Counting Numbers
|
{ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }
| 1, 18, 27, 2061 |
Integers
|
{ ... -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }
| -15, 0, 27, 1102 |
But nobody disagrees on the definition of an integer, so when in doubt say "integer", and if you only want positive integers, say "positive integers". It is not only accurate, it makes you sound intelligent. Like this (note: zero is not positive or negative):
- Integers = { ..., -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }
- Negative Integers = { ..., -5, -4, -3, -2, -1 }
- Positive Integers = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... }
- Non-Negative Integers = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... } (includes zero, see?)
Thursday, 17 April 2014
Procedures and Functions
Procedures and Functions
Procedures and Functions – GCSE Computer Science Revision. We talked about how you use a sequence of events to achieve a task. Remember that pepperoni pizza, and how you need to follow each part of the procedure in sequence otherwise you end up with no pizza?
If you ask your brother Sam to order pizza while you finish fixing your bike, you don’t say “ring the pizza place, choose a pizza, pay them and they will deliver a pizza that we will eat.” You just say “Sam! Let’s get pizza!” Sam knows what needs to be done. He’s on the case and he orders pizza without having to think through what he needs to do. He’s followed a procedure that we’ll call “ordering pizza”, and that title is a short label for a set of actions.
Now let’s have a look at functions. Imagine you wanted to know how many pizza variations they had at the pizza place. You could go in, make a list of all the choices and add them up to get a number, or value, and you would rejoice, because not only would you have discovered every single combination of toppings they offered, you would have performed a function! Happy days!
You could use a function in thousands of ways. For instance, you might want to know how many students graduated last year, or you might want to find out how many students over the last five years found jobs within three months of graduation. Then you might want to use those figures, or values, to find out what percentage of graduates found work within the local area, moved further away, or moved abroad.
Then there are built-in functions. In its simplest form a built-in function could be something like, pressing H on the keyboard and seeing H appear on the monitor screen. These are assigned functions that are particular to a programming language that has its own grammar rules. PHP, for instance, has over 700 of them. Why are they useful? If the function you performed when you went into the pizza shop was a built-in function that included access to an online menu, you wouldn’t have to write the code. You’d just have to tell the programme to carry out that function and it would trot off and bring back the number you need.
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
Friday, 11 April 2014
Unit 5 Gaming Review
REVIEW IT |
You must produce a review of your game that would be suitable for publication in an on-screen computer games magazine. Here are some examples:
Produce a game review. You may wish to use this outline to help you.
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Guess My Number
# Guess My Number
#
# The computer picks a random number between 1 and 100
# The player tries to guess it and the computer lets
# the player know if the guess is too high, too low
# or right on the money
import random
print("\tWelcome to 'Guess My Number'!")
print("\nI'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100.")
print("Try to guess it in as few attempts as possible.\n")
# set the initial values
the_number = random.randint(1, 100)
guess = int(input("Take a guess: "))
tries = 1
# guessing loop
while guess != the_number:
if guess > the_number:
print("Lower...")
else:
print("Higher...")
guess = int(input("Take a guess: "))
tries += 1
print("You guessed it! The number was", the_number)
print("And it only took you", tries, "tries!\n")
input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")
#
# The computer picks a random number between 1 and 100
# The player tries to guess it and the computer lets
# the player know if the guess is too high, too low
# or right on the money
import random
print("\tWelcome to 'Guess My Number'!")
print("\nI'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100.")
print("Try to guess it in as few attempts as possible.\n")
# set the initial values
the_number = random.randint(1, 100)
guess = int(input("Take a guess: "))
tries = 1
# guessing loop
while guess != the_number:
if guess > the_number:
print("Lower...")
else:
print("Higher...")
guess = int(input("Take a guess: "))
tries += 1
print("You guessed it! The number was", the_number)
print("And it only took you", tries, "tries!\n")
input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
Demonstrates the if statement
# Password
# Demonstrates the if statement
print("Welcome to System Security Inc.")
print("-- where security is our middle name\n")
password = input("Enter your password: ")
if password == "secret":
print("Access Granted")
input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")
# Demonstrates the if statement
print("Welcome to System Security Inc.")
print("-- where security is our middle name\n")
password = input("Enter your password: ")
if password == "secret":
print("Access Granted")
input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")
Thursday, 3 April 2014
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