Designing - detail, detail, detail...

The key test for designs (and this is true for exams and portfolios) is:

could I (a skilled user) implement your design exactly as you have presented it working only from your designs and without having to make decisions myself?

In other words: does it tell me everything I need to know?

Everything.

Size, font, location, colours, macros, formulae. The whole banana. In enough detail.

It's fine to use more than one sheet of paper for each page. You might want one for the GUI and one for formulas for a spreadsheet. You might need another form macros. For a newsletter you may need one for layout and one for style.

The key is: is there enough detail (through annotations) for me to be able to produce it.

Here's one that someone, let's call her "Grace", made earlier.

Yeah, click it: it gets bigger...

It's *just* for the GUI - the layout of the sheet. The detail's OK - but she now needs to go on and get the details of the size for the boxes (by right clicking on her sheet she's designed and getting properties and the size tab), the width of the lines, the colour of the lines and the colour (a bright yellow) of the button.

To define the colour it'd be best to use a quantitative method - like using the RGB. You should be able to find a way of doing this (ask if you can't). In this case you can go to the lines/colors tab and go to more colors and you should be able to get the RGB from there:

ICT Systems - what?

Good question:how do we define precisely what an ICT system is?

Here's one definition of a system:

A set of related component parts brought together to form an inter-connected unified whole to perform some function.

Hmm - so it's a bunch of stuff that comes together to do a job of some kind. The "stuff" can be people, ideas, computers, buildings or anything else - anything can be a component of the system.

So, here's an example of a computerised booking system for a health centre.

You can see the components within the system (the ovals), the boundary of the system (the line) and the idea of a subsystem.

Connectedness:
One of the key ideas about systems is that they're connected. The components need to be linked together to perform the function of the network.

So, in the health centre booking example, the patient needs to be connected to the receptionist (via a telephone perhaps) who needs to be able to connect to a computer (via it's interface to access specific software I imagine).

Without connectedness systems aren't systems.

ICT Systems:
ICT systems basically do 3 things in some form:

1. convey data - move it from one place to another
2. manipulate data - change it from one form to another
3. store data - so that it can be used at some other point

Here's a system map of a system for sending SMS messages from one user to another.

Another way of drawing this is as a flow diagram:

In this diagram User 1 keys the SMS message into their handset. The handset stores the message and manipulates it into a form which can be sent electronically (i.e. into binary code). The handset then connects to the SMS network and conveys the message to the message server where it is stored. The server then conveys the message to the receiving unit (perhaps via other parts of it's network) which stores and manipulates the data before alerting the user that they have a new text message.

The information will also be manipulated (and then stored) to work out how much to charge the users of the system - and data held on the server will be updated to reflect all of this.

Summary Bit:
There's the ICT system: components working together to convey, manipulate and store data to achieve an aim.

Killer Instinct

Totally by chance I ran across an article which talks about the use of computers to catch criminal type people - a system called HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System - a strained acronym if ever I read one...).

I imagine there may be other references to it somewhere or other - bound to be as it sounds quite interesting. I've put a version of the article (OK, 3 screenshots stitched together...) on the school system, but the original article is available at http://www.open.ac.uk/hsc/pers/m.s.dowling/pics/d115418.pdf (warning: PDF file) - you'll want about page 36.

It is a long magazine and machines may have some problems loading/saving it as some of the fonts used are a bit odd. I certainly couldn't print the whole magazine, although I could print page 36.

The article itself - which is aimed at Open University students - is quite easy to read and access. I think the version I put on the school system even has the reference you'd want stuck on the bottom of it.

e2a: there's a quite useful page on HOLMES on wikipedia. The usual caveats about the reliability of wikipedia apply of course, but it strikes me as a reasonable starting point (I think somewhere on wiki there's an article about how to reference (or 'cite') a wiki page).

This led me to the HOLMES 2 site itself. The external links at the bottom of the wiki page led me to Law Technology News, which might be an interesting place to find some quite interesting things (perhaps).

The Internet and Global Security

Interesting story over on the BBC website about how the UK Home Office is set to require (ask?) your friendly ISP to monitor exactly what you do on the interwebz (UK surveillance plan to go ahead).

Hmm, so there'll presumably find out that the vast majority of internet users are boring geeks then?

Interesting article though, useful for the Jan 2010 exam paper. The links off of it are a good starting point as well.

And there's Radio too...
On a similar theme, it looks like the wireless might be a good source of useful stuff as well.

Radio 4 (yes, I know, I know - I'm old though...) has a programme called Click On. The last two series seem to be available online. The most recent episode happened to be on this evening as I was driving home and had something about some kind of e-fit system which would make identifying criminals (and other nasty people) so much easier. Might be used by the police and all. You can podcast that one.

I also see that an episode from last April (series 4, episode 6) is titled "Clare English explores some of the ways in which technology is being used to tackle crime". Might be useful again for that Unit 1 exam?

Over on the World Service (yes, I know that as well...) Digital Planet might be worth a look as well. There are summaries of each episode available.

I'm thinking: useful way of getting more than one type of source.

Students, students, students...

Some places to look for ideas about the target audience - and their take on careers in the police, legal and regulatory organisations:

The National Union of Students - clearly aimed at students. There is a careers section under Student Life. I'd use this to get some ideas about the way to write for that target audience - the NUS is writing for it's members so they should be hitting that audience spot on shouldn't they?

Prospects is a careers guidance site which is the official partner of the NUS. There may be some helpful content which gives you some ideas about the careers specified in the project brief.

Walkden school's magazine was the thing I used in class and might be worth getting some ideas from.

Hannah's Guide to Excel Keyboard Shortcut Heaven

Hannah says...

• Showing Formulas: Ctrl+Star Wars (the star wars button being the odd one without a name underneath Escape in the top left of the keyboard). Think: control the force... :-)
• Showing Macro Code: Alt+F11. You might then need to navigate to the different sheets and modules in the left window pane.
• Spell Checking: F7

Hannah says Cowabunga

"You may take your laptop into the exam"? Imagine...

You can in Norway.

Well, in parts of Norway they're trying the idea out anyway. Every 16-19 year old gets given a special laptop which allows them to work effectively (well, that's the idea anyway) in school and at home - and now to experiment with using them in exams.

The secondary students are given a laptop by the government when they turn 16 to help them with schoolwork.

During exams the specially-tailored software springs into life to block and record any attempt at cheating.

From: BBC Website - Norway tests laptop scheme

The idea is that the laptops come preloaded with software that's needed by the individual - so other than standard word processing and spreadsheet packages, art or design students would get specialist software. Then the machines can be used in exams.

The principal is that because students are used to using specific machines and software, they won't have the difficulties that tend to be experienced when special software packages are used just for exams (i.e. working out how to do something in the "new" software).

The difficulty of "cheating" through communication and Internet access seems to have been dealt with by the system, although papers can be downloaded at the start of the exam:

When an exam starts, students go to a website to download the papers for their particular test. However, said the official in charge of the scheme, in some schools answers were completed on computer from paper-based questions.

"That's also why we have to monitor the laptops during the exams, because they are not supposed to have internet access and not supposed to communicate with other students," the official added.

From: BBC Website - Norway tests laptop scheme

I can foresee other problems as well mind you - what happens if a machine locks up or crashes? What about one of those oh so handy "Software has to close now. Do you want to send an error report?" messages?

And can you imagine how many extension leads you'd need to sort out the battery running out issues?!