For GCSE ICT You Do Three Pieces of Coursework

GCSE ICT Coursework 1A – Making a Booklet

For GCSE ICT you do three pieces of coursework. This piece of coursework is worth 15% of your final GCSE mark.

For this piece of coursework you are going to design and create a booklet. Your booklet should be 4-8 pages when finished. You can chose to do a booklet about your favourite subject, an after school club, a school team, an activity run by the school, an advert for an event or any other aspect of school life.

As well as creating a booklet, you must hand in a write-up about what you have done. The write-up is where you get most of the marks.

Before making a final decision on what the topic of your booklet will be you need to check with your teacher that you have chosen an appropriate topic. You need to make sure that your booklet will have a mixture of text, pictures and numeric data.

Important points to remember

·  Most of the marks are on the write-up, not the booklet.

·  You must save your work regularly or you might lose it.

·  Keep several copies of your work (one on the network, one on a floppy disk) in case anything goes wrong. If you do not hand in your work because you lost your work, then it does not matter how the work was lost you will not get any marks for this piece of coursework.

·  You must have pictures, text and numbers on your booklet, if you do not have all three you will not be able to get all the marks.

Writing an Introduction

You have done a proposal saying what your booklet is going to be about. Using this proposal, and any comments your teacher has made about your proposal, write a paragraph containing the following:

·  A brief introduction (what will your booklet be about)

·  Who is your booklet aimed at (pupils, prospective pupils, parents, prospective parents, teachers from other schools, pupils from other schools, etc…)? Why will they be interested in your booklet?

·  What exactly is the purpose of the booklet e.g. an advert for an event or an ad vice for coursework booklet?

Print out your introduction and put it in your coursework folder.

Organising your work

In your user area create a folder called “ICTcoursework”. Inside this folder create sub-folders called “booklet”, “database”, and “Project2”. Move your introduction for your booklet into the folder “booklet”. Make sure that the file containing your introduction has a sensible name.

·  It is important that you save your work in the correct folders – this will make it easier to find your work again.

·  Always use sensible file names as this will also make your work easier to find.

·  For this piece of coursework there are some marks that are given just for using folders and having sensible file names – so make sure that you do this.

Collecting data from ICT sources

·  Do a search on the Internet for a picture, some text or some numeric data that would be relevant for your booklet. Take screenshots showing how you did this search. Then include the data that you found. Write about why this piece of data would help meet the purpose of your booklet.

·  Do an advanced search on the Internet for a picture, some text or some numeric data that would be relevant for your booklet. Take screenshots showing how you did this search. Then include the data that you found. Write about why this piece of data would help meet the purpose of your booklet.

·  Do a search on the Internet for a picture, some text or some numeric data that would be relevant for your booklet. Do the same search on a CD-ROM. Make sure that both searches find something useful for your booklet. Take screenshots showing how you did these searches. Then include the data that you found. Write about why these pieces of data would help meet the purpose of your booklet.

For each search you have done write about how you did this search (your screenshots will help with this). Try to show that you have explored a web site (looked at several different pages on the web site).

Collecting data from non-ICT sources

Get at least two different pieces of information (picture, text or numbers) from non-IT sources. Scan, or type, them in. Save them in the correct folder using sensible names. Write where you got the information from. For each piece of information collected write why you feel it is relevant to the purpose of your work. The purpose of your work was what you wrote in the introduction.

·  Pictures from non-IT sources can be scanned in.

·  Numbers and text from non-IT sources can either be scanned in or can be typed in. If typed, include a copy of where you found the information (this can be a photocopy or the original) e.g. include a copy of a newspaper article.

·  One possible non-IT source is a teacher e.g. if you are creating a booklet about a particular department at the school you could ask a teacher in that department some questions e.g. “How many pieces of coursework do you have to do for GCSE art?”, “Where do you go on field trips for A Level Biology?”. Include a copy of the questions asked and the answers in your coursework.

Exploring a web site

Find a web site that will be useful source of information for your booklet. Make sure that this web site has lots of different pages on it. Click on hyperlinks to explore this web site for information for your booklet. Take pictures of the different pages you looked at on this site. Explain why you decided to follow some hyperlinks and not others (why did these links look like they would/would not be useful for the purpose of your booklet).

Collecting more information

Collect any other information that you might want to use. For each piece of information state where you got it from & why it is useful for your purpose. Possible sources of data include CD-ROMs, Internet, Clip Art and non-ICT sources. You need to have collected more information than you are actually going to use on your booklet.

Developing information

You must prove to the examiner that you have developed some of the information you collected. Select one piece of information to develop. Include a copy of the original version of the information, write a brief description showing how you developed (changed) it, write why the changes were made and why these changes were relevant to the purpose of the booklet, and then include a copy of the information after you have changed it. Print out this piece of work and put it in your coursework folder. Examples of ways you could develop a piece of information:

·  Take a picture and crop it to remove parts of the picture which you do not want to be on your booklet, this means you have decided to only use part of a picture – say why.

·  If you have copied some text from an Internet site you could format the text – change the font, moved parts of the text around, make a few words bold etc… Say why you have made these changes to the text.

Creating new information

You also need to use one piece of information collected and produce new information based on this. Include a copy of the original information, write a brief description of how you created new information using the old information, write about why you have created this new information and include a copy of the new information that you have created. Print out this piece of work and include it in your coursework folder. Examples of ways of creating new information:

·  For a booklet about GCSE History: using a table of the grades achieved by pupils last year in GCSE exams you could create a bar graph to show these results in an easier to understand way. This can be done using a spreadsheet.

·  For a booklet about the eating habits of pupils using the school canteen: take information about how much each pupil spends a week on food at the canteen and calculate the average amount spent.

·  For a booklet about a Shakespeare play you study in Yr 7 English: using a description of the play written to help GCSE students that you found and changing it so that it is written in an appropriate way for Yr 7 students.

First Draft

You are now going to start creating your booklet. To do this you will be using Microsoft Word. Open up a new file. This first version of your booklet is only going to include text. Type in the text that you want to have on your booklet and put a heading at the top. Save the booklet by going to the file menu, selecting save as. Give the file a sensible name e.g. “FirstDraft” and click on save. Print out this copy of your booklet, write first draft in pen at the top of the page and include it in your coursework folder.

Second draft

You are now going to improve your booklet. Open up your first draft of your booklet. You are going to include a picture now. Chose a picture that you found by doing a search (either on the Internet or on a CD-ROM). Add this picture to your booklet. Save the booklet by going to the file menu, selecting save as. Give the file a sensible name e.g. “SecondDraft” and click on save. Print out this copy of your booklet, write second draft in pen at the top of the page and include it in your coursework folder.

Before further improving the booklet you need to write about why you have made the improvement (adding a picture). Write a paragraph about the changes you made from the first draft of your booklet to the second draft. Talk about why you made this change and why this change helps you meet the purpose of your booklet (as stated in your introduction). Save the work and print it out.

Third draft

You are now going to further improve your booklet. Open up the second draft of your booklet. You are going to include the numeric data (numbers) on the booklet now. Add the numeric data to your booklet. Make sure the text on your booklet has been properly formatted (sensible font and size, good use of spacing, use of bold and italic when appropriate). Move the picture you inserted when doing your second draft to a better place. Save the booklet by going to the file menu, selecting save as. Give the file a sensible name e.g. “ThirdDraft” and click on save. Print out this copy of your booklet, write third draft in pen at the top of the page and include it in your coursework folder.

Before further improving the booklet you need to write about why you have made the improvements (adding the numbers, formatting the text, moving the picture). Write a paragraph about the changes you made from the second draft of your booklet to the third draft. Talk about why you made these changes and why these changes help you meet the purpose of your booklet (as stated in your introduction). Save the work and print it out.

Fourth draft

For the next version of your booklet add in all the other pictures, text, titles and numeric data that you want to put on your booklet. Do not worry too much about putting everything in the correct place – you will move things around later. Make sure that you do not use every piece of information you found – be selective, choose only the best pieces of information. Format all the text so that it is in the style you like – remember to be consistent. Save the booklet by going to the file menu, selecting save as. Give the file a sensible name e.g. “FourthDraft” and click on save. Print out this copy of your booklet, write fourth draft in pen at the top of the page and include it in your coursework folder.

Make sure that your booklet does include the information that you developed and the new information that you created.

Write a paragraph about the changes you made from the third draft of your booklet to the fourth draft. Talk about why you made these changes and why these changes help you meet the purpose of your booklet (as stated in your introduction). Save the work and print it out.

Changing the Layout

You need to show that you have considered different layouts for your booklet. Open the latest version of your booklet. Move some of the pictures, numeric data and text around so that the booklet is better than before.

Save the booklet by going to the file menu, selecting save as. Give the file a sensible name e.g. “SecondLayout” and click on save. Print out this copy of your booklet and include it in your coursework folder.

Write a paragraph about the changes you made to improve the layout of your booklet. Talk about why you made these changes and why these changes help you meet the purpose of your booklet (as stated in your introduction). Save the work and print it out.

Changing the Layout 2

Improve the layout of the booklet one more time. You should now have the final version of your booklet. Save the booklet by going to the file menu, selecting save as. Give the file a sensible name e.g. “Final” and click on save. Print out this copy of your booklet and include it in your coursework folder.

Again, write a paragraph about the changes you made to improve the layout. Talk about why you made these changes and why these changes help you meet the purpose of your booklet (as stated in your introduction). Write about the reasons you have chosen your particular layout. Talk about the margins, borders, tables, lists, headings, subheadings, placement of pictures, and any other layout decisions you have made. Save the work and print it out.

Talk about how you created your booklet

Print out another copy of the final version of your booklet. On this version you are going to write some annotations showing how you created your booklet. Do this using a pen. Write brief notes on your work showing text that you copied and pasted from other places, pictures you inserted from files, clip art you have imported, etc… Include this in your coursework folder.