Released June 2012 For Assessment Submission January 2013 to June 2015

Transcription

1 Released June 2012 For Assessment Submission January 2013 to June 2015 GCSE COMPUTING A452 Practical Investigation *A * CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT MATERIAL 5 This assessment may be periodically reviewed. Please check on OCR Interchange that you have the Controlled Assessment material valid for the appropriate assessment session. * A * INSTRUCTIONS TO TEACHERS Please refer to Section 4 of the GCSE Computing specification for instructions on completing this controlled assessment task. Each task can be contextualised appropriately to suit facilities available in your centre. The marking criteria should be available to candidates whilst completing the task. The quality of written communication will be assessed in the judgements and conclusion section. The total number of marks for this unit is 45. INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES This document consists of 8 pages. Any blank pages are indicated. Teachers are responsible for ensuring that assessment is carried out against the Controlled Assessment set for the relevant examination series (detailed above). Assessment evidence produced that does not reflect the relevant examination series will not be accepted. [Y/600/3256] DC (CW/CGW) 60965/4 OCR is an exempt Charity Turn over

2 2 The purpose of this unit is to investigate a topic chosen from a set of options supplied by OCR. In this investigation, there will be an opportunity to look in depth at an aspect of computing that goes beyond the subject matter outlined in A451. The tasks will require a significant element of practical activity, which must be evidenced in the report and which will form a major element of the assessment. The topics will enable practical investigation and some supplementary research to be carried out in a variety of ways. These will include, but are not restricted to: practical investigations with hardware or software practical investigations with online resources Supplementary research may be required and resources may include: web-based enquiry contact with IT professionals research using computer industry publications

3 3 Candidates should complete all tasks. App Inventor One of the most important recent trends in computing has been the production of apps (applications) to run on smart phones. Thousands of apps are available that allow users to access all sorts of information from wherever they are. Smart phones make use of various operating systems. One of the most popular is Android, which has been developed by Google from the Linux kernel. Most of the Android code is open source, so it is possible for independent developers to produce apps. Most apps are written using a variant of Java, but there is another way. App Inventor is an event-driven programming environment that allows programs to be produced by snapping together visual programming blocks. It is available online at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) web site. The resources should be accessible at The centre must ensure that all relevant software has been downloaded and tested before candidates attempt the tasks. App Inventor works with an Android phone, but you do not need to have an Android phone to write apps. Much of an app s functionality can be tested and developed on screen using a special phone emulator. If you want to use special features such as an accelerometer or a camera, you will need to use a real phone to test the apps. However these special features are not required in this assignment. Resources are available for learning App Inventor, including an online tutorial to develop an app called PaintPot. The App Inventor environment consists of two components: the screen designer and the block editor. The screen designer This is used to put together the components of the app. These may be labels, buttons and other visible objects as well as invisible functional components. PaintPot Save Save As Checkpoint Open the Blocks Editor Package for Phone Palette Viewer Components Properties Basic Button Canvas CheckBox Clock Image Label ListPicker PasswordTextBox Display Invisible Components in Viewer G PaintPot Wipe 5:09 PM Screen1 ThreeButtons ButtonRed ButtonBlue ButtonGreen DrawingCanvas ButtonWipe BackgroundColor White BackgroundImage cat.png... Icon None... ScreenOrientation Unspecified Scrollable TextBox TinyDB Title PaintPot Media Animation Social Sensors Screen Arrangement Fig. 1 Turn over

4 4 The block editor This is where you program how the components behave. when do ButtonRed.Click set to color DrawingCanvas.PaintColor Red when do ButtonBlue.Click set to color DrawingCanvas.PaintColor Blue when ButtonGreen.Click do set to color DrawingCanvas.PaintColor Green Fig. 2 Your assignment 1. Do the PaintPot tutorial on the App Inventor site at paintpot/paintpot-part1.html to create your own app. You may use kitty.png or produce your own drawing if you prefer. Test your PaintPot app using the emulator. Produce evidence to show how you tested it. 2. App Inventor is an event-driven programming environment. (a) Describe what this means, with reference to Fig. 3. when Drawingcanvas.Touched x name x touchedsprite y name name y touchedsprite do call to x value x DrawingCanvas.DrawCircle y r value y number 5 Fig. 3 (b) Make a list of events that can be detected by a typical Android phone.

5 3. Extend your PaintPot app so that the user can change the thickness of the drawing line. Produce evidence to show that you have tested this extension. 4. When you set up the components of an app in the browser, they are given default names. Explain why it is a good idea to change these default names Extend your PaintPot app so that clicking on a button changes the background picture. You will need to provide a different graphic. Produce evidence to show that you have tested this extension. 6. Produce a new app that stores a set of three images of computer hardware components. When a button is pressed, a new image is displayed. The user must identify the image by entering its name in a text box. The app then indicates if the answer is correct or not. Produce evidence to show that you have produced and tested this app. 7. Write a conclusion about the effectiveness of writing programs in a block programming environment compared with a high level programming language such as Java, Python or C++.

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8 8 BLANK PAGE Copyright Information OCR is committed to seeking permission to reproduce all third-party content that it uses in its assessment materials. OCR has attempted to identify and contact all copyright holders whose work is used in this paper. To avoid the issue of disclosure of answer-related information to candidates, all copyright acknowledgements are reproduced in the OCR Copyright Acknowledgements Booklet. This is produced for each series of examinations and is freely available to download from our public website ( after the live examination series. If OCR has unwittingly failed to correctly acknowledge or clear any third-party content in this assessment material, OCR will be happy to correct its mistake at the earliest possible opportunity. For queries or further information please contact the Copyright Team, First Floor, 9 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 1GE. OCR is part of the Cambridge Assessment Group; Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department of the University of Cambridge.