Teaching and Learning Guide/Resources
Applied Tasks (Software)
* This section of the course is allocated 25 hours
In this section, students are expected to learn and apply skills and techniques which contribute to the prototyping of information systems, or part thereof.
There is a role in the syllabus for both working examples of smaller tasks, eg. suited to an individual user’s needs, and models of parts of larger, real-world systems.
Specific ‘skills’ are not stated, but the approximate hierarchy of capabilities below should give guidance on breadth and depth of areas which students could cover.
Where stated, terms refer to Microsoft Office software, but any appropriate software is suitable
Database Basics
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Concept of fields, records, tables, file, data types
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Data dictionary, primary keys, integrity constraints
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Relationships between tables (one to one, one to many, many to many)
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Selection filters / query by example (‘query’) – incl. on multiple tables
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Display of output – report generation (‘forms’, ‘report’, ‘pages’)
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Importing/exporting data
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Mail merge
Databases Extended – aspects might include:
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Advanced queries (‘update’, ‘append’, etc)
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Statistics in reporting
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SQL
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Navigation buttons, scripting
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Macros
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Front end menus / user interface (‘Switchboards’)
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Validation / control of data entry
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Database security, protection
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VBA
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Other data storage models, eg. object –oriented
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Data warehouses / data mining
Spreadsheet Basics
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Comparison of tables (use of formulas in MS Word tables, spreadsheets, databases?)
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Basic arithmetic operations, formulae, data
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Filtering, sorting
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Absolute and relative cell referencing, replication
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Importing and exporting data – file types
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Charting
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‘What if …’ scenarios
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Auto formatting, conditional formatting, data validation
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Mail merge
* This section of the course is allocated 25 hours
Spreadsheets Extended – aspects might include:
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Sorting techniques
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Pivot table/chart
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Subtotals
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Lookup tables
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Naming cells, ranges
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Calculations between sheets
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Basic recording and analysis of data (Macro recording)
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Security / protection
Application Programming
Some suggestions:
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Crocodile Technology
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VBA – eg. using Excel
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HTML, Java programming
Multimedia programming
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Flash Action script
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Powerpoint VBA
Website design and development
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Planning, design and structure
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Page/site creation
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Working with images, lists, frames, tables, layers
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Linking pages, websites, files
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web forms
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Cascading style sheets
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Publishing to server
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Dynamic web pages, server-side software (eg. ASP, Java Servlets), XHTML
Some examples of database/spreadsheet structures which could be developed and/or examined might include:
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Library circulation system
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Appointment booking system
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Airline flight bookings
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Sports carnival database
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Stock control database, eg. for a shop, car yard.
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Membership database, eg. sporting club, magazine subscriptions
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Payment collection
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Billing, eg. for work done
This could include active websites, where web pages access data stores and generate pages ‘on the fly’.
Examples include: Amazon, JetStar/Virgin Blue/Webjet, eBay
Examples of resources:
