Friday 11th September

Bubbl.us graph of "Hardware and Software"

Today being the longest day of the week but that aside it wasn't to bad.

First port of call was Creative Digital Media, where we were going to have a speaker come in and tell us about their work. Unfortunately they couldn't make it today but on the plus side they will be visiting us next week so it gives us time to sort questions out.

So we cracked on with the lesson, we started off doing the above bubbl.us graph on "hardware and software"(above). It basically shows the hardware and software available to us in Digital Media. After break, Gillian showed us Windows Movie Maker and demonstrated how it worked and how to use it. Copying files off the computer, Gillian managed to put a short film together with background music, title and credits. We were then set loose to give it a go ourselves. I copied over some photos of myself, my family and my hobbies onto the computer and used them to make a film. Unfortunately I had to stick with the music from the computer and not my own due to the computer not liking the format my music was in.

After lunch, we had Computer Hardware and Systems, where I was given a Student Learning Pack for the subject. The subjects covered are:

• Binary to Decimal
• Types of Software
• Investigate OS & PC specifications
• Formatting and Partitioning
• Install Operating System
• Install Utility Software
• Install Application Software
• Install Motherboard, Hard Drive, CD ROM, Memory, Graphics card
• Install Printer & Flash Drive
• Investigate BIOS beep codes
• Draw fault finding flow chart
• Diagnose 2 faults.

We then went over some of them, and at the end of each section there were questions on what we had just read, with four answers to choose from. It was really interesting how much I learned and how well I answered the questions, admittedly I did get some wrong, but thats how you learn.

At the end of the lesson, our tutor gave us some files to take away with us to read, and told us that the information that was in the student pack and in these files would help us to pass our assessment, which is coming up on Monday.