GCSE Computing Exam - 13 Jun 2013

What was the answer to the Lossy and Loseless compression answer? Which way round was it?

found the exam okay, but hadnt revised hexadecimal and binary so i didnt get those questions.
aswell as that i didnt get how many bytes in a gigabyte, yet i knew how many in a kilobyte and megabyte

the exam was realy short and i finished in under 30 minutes, thought i had the wrong paper and panicked a bit

I found the exam fairly good but I found the six marker on legal issues very vague. Do you remember what you put for this? Also, can you please tell me what you wrote for the six marker on hardware devices?

what do you guys reckon the A* mark would be for this paper?

exam went horribly for me. i found most questions easy but the six marker on legal issues was awful, and the question about the positions and the changes you would make; that was so hard. reckon i got a b in that test.

just as well, i needed 58-64 out of 80 for an a star as i got 100% in the coursework.

compared to the other past papers, this paper was quite hard i found.

only time will tell how well i did...

Yeah, I suppose both six mark questions were actually a little vague. For the question about legal considerations for the school storing examination and attendance data, you should have cited the Computer Misuse Act - which states that it is unlawful to gain unauthorised access to a computer system - and the Data Protection Act - which gives legal rights to people who have information stored about them - but not the Copyright Act. The software used by the school needed to have stored the information in an encrypted form so that it could not be accessed by an unauthorised person - as the data stored will be sensitive. The software also needed to save to a safe location, both physically and virtually. Physically so that the data could not easily be lost, and virtually to reduce the possibility of unauthorised access.

As for the other six mark question, I believe that this was about the similarities between a game console and desktop PC. You needed to know that the definition of a computer system is simply something that processes an input to produce an output. Therefore both systems use an input; for the games console its things like the optical drive and games controller, whereas for the PC it's the more conventional keyboard and mouse, etc. Both systems feature a CPU and output to a monitor or TV or some form of display, and speakers. You could have also extended the answer by stating the both computer systems would most likely have some form of storage (to save games and software and other files) and some form of transmission (such as WiFi) in order to communicate on the network and with the Internet.

Hope that helps

For the legal issues one, I talked about the Data Protection, Copyright and Health and Safety at Work Act but mentioned security briefly with passwords and firewall (ran out space after). For the other one, I mentioned magnetic hard disk, solid state storage, monitor, speakers, microphone, webcam but not keyboard and mouse because I didn't think a game console would have one. Is this okay? I am really worried now

Don't get too worried - as I mentioned earlier, both these questions only total 12 marks, so even if you didn't get any marks for either of them there's still a good chance you could get an A, if not an A*. At the end of the day though, you've got to think that worrying won't change anything and all that matters is that you did your best. Just out of interest, how come you took Computing?

For the legal question - it's good that you mentioned the Data Protection Act but any others were largely irrelevant (apart from the Computer Misuse Act). You should have got a mark or two for talking about passwords as this ties in with encryption, and also if you said the firewall could protect against unauthorised access or even help prevent spyware from being deployed on the computer system.

For the other question - those are all relevant I/O (Input/Output) devices and you're right about the conventional keyboard and mouse. You also needed to write about the definition of a computer system being anything that processes an input to produce an output to get the full marks. As you mentioned, storage should have also been included in that definition, as well as some form of transmission such as wireless or ethernet using a network card.

Ok. Thanks! I just find Computing interesting and had some knowledge of Java etc prior to the course so I decided to take it

You're welcome. The reason I asked is because it's not everyone's subject and it is sometimes falsely advertised a little (for instance at my school, our options booklet talked about games design and creating software etc. - which clearly isn't what most of computing is about) but luckily it sounds as though you knew that. I just didn't want to say anything if you wanted a career in Computing which was dependent on you passing this GCSE, but even so I would say it is really the A level that counts and the GCSE is just a bonus that allows you to get a taster for A level and some employers may use it to gauge how much knowledge you had in secondary school etc.

Anyway, I mainly program in AutoIt and Java too so if you ever need any help you know where I am

I think I got like 50 percent on that test but 100 on my coursework so what grade would I get overall?

Without looking too much into it, I would predict that you get an A overall - perhaps a high B, or even a low A* - depending on the grade boundries. It all depends on the UMS marks - which I'm not an expert on - but I do know that the examination is only worth 40% of the total GCSE so your coursework will boost your overall grade a lot (well done on the coursework by the way)!

If I find anything out that would help me make a better prediction I'll let you know.