A4.1  The Use of Office Automation Software – Word processing

 

Learning Outcomes:

• Design and create formatted documents or reports effectively and suitably using a word-processing tool.
• Through meaningful tasks related to the real world, such as advertisements fliers, newsletters and reports, students are expected to apply formatting features such as tables, columns, text frames and graphics, with consideration of the use of colour, size and positioning in presenting their documents.
• Other features such as table of contents, indexes, footnotes, hyperlinks and checkers (e.g. Spelling checker) should be introduced to students to facilitate the writing of a report and to enhance the readability and accuracy of documents.
• Convert between various document / text formats and justify their usage.
• Examples of text formats are rich text format, hypertext document format, portable document format and word document format.

 

Formatting features

• Character formatting
• Text frames
• Page formatting/page layout
• Columns
• Section break
• orientation
• Insert 插入
• Tables 表格
• Graphics: Colour, Size, Positioning, text wrapping
• References 參考資料
• Table of contents 目錄
• Footnotes 註腳
• Indexes 索引, use with mark entry 項目標記: help to create an index similar to the one found at the back of a book
• Hyperlinks
• Checkers: spell check, grammar check
• Examples of other functions:
• Replace
• Tab stop: by default, each tab stops at 0.5 inches.
• Mail merge: 1 template file containing merge field (where data inserts), another file containing the data.

 

Various document formats

• Rich text format
• Adv: cross platform, text format preserved and allow further editing, smaller file size
• Hypertext document format (See HTML)
• Portable document format
• Adv: cross platform, smaller file size (image compression), good for reading
• Disadv: difficult to edit
• Word document format
• Adv: text format preserved and allow further editing, advanced functions available
• Disadv: cost, larger file size

 

References:

https://10infotech2017.weebly.com/word-processing.html

https://www.logaster.com/blog/pdf/

https://www.page-house.com/clippings/benefitsOfRTF.html

 A3. Data Representation

 

Learning Outcomes:

• Distinguish between analog and digital data. State applications or situations where conversion of analog to digital data is required, or vice versa.
• Explain why IT uses digital data
• The relationship between the number of bits and number of patterns/combinations available should be mentioned (e.g. three bits can be used to represent eight colours).
• Convert integers from denary numbers to binary numbers or hexadecimal numbers, or vice versa.
• Adopt two’s complement for the representation of negative integers.
• Perform simple calculations (addition and subtraction only) on binary numbers and analyse overflow errors.
• In understanding errors, minimum and maximum numbers an n-bit can hold (maximum 2 bytes) should be considered.
• Know how characters are represented by using common international standards such as American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), the Big-5 code, the Guobiao (GB) code and the Unicode.
• The relationship between the size of the character set and the representation should be explained. Recall of specific codes is not required.
• Know briefly how different multimedia elements are digitised. Convert them into different file formats and compare them for storing the same data.
• Elementary file conversion is required but not the editing of a file. Students should be given the experience in creating various file formats such as wav vs. mp3, bmp vs. jpg, and avi vs. mpeg2.

 

Bits vs combinations

No. of bits	Possible combinations	Calculation of combinations
1 bit	0,1	21=2
2 bits	00,01,10,11	22=4
…	…	…
n bits		2n

 

Representation of negative integers

Use 2’s complement method in modern computer

Suppose we use 4 bits to represent number: first bit is the sign (+/-) and remaining bits are the size

For 0 and positive numbers, the sign bit is 0

number	In binary form		number	In binary form
0	0000		4	0100
1	0001		5	0101
2	0010		6	0110
3	0011		7	0111

 

For negative numbers, we can derive the binary form from the positive number using 2’s complement method

-1:

	steps
Positive number		0001
1’s complement	1à0, 0à1	1110
2’s complement	+1	1111

 

number	In binary form		number	In binary form
-1	1111		-5	1011
-2	1110		-6	1010
-3	1101		-7	1001
-4	1100		-8	1000

So, the range of numbers represented by 4 bits is -2³ to 2³-1.

I.e. the range of numbers represented by n bits is -2^n-1 to 2^n-1-1

Overflow errors

• For 2 numbers with different signs, their sum will not overflow.
• If the 2 numbers have same signs, overflow may happen. i.e. when the result has different sign bit, overflow has occurred.
• e.g. 1111 + 1000 = (1)0111 = 0111 (overflow error)

 

Character representation

• ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), 7 bits for each character
• Big-5 code: Traditional Chinese, 2 bytes for each character
• GB (Guobiao) Code: Simplified Chinese, 2 bytes for each character
• Unicode: Characters of different languages (If you need to use traditional and simplified Chinese at the same time, use Unicode), 1 to 4 bytes for each character

 

Multimedia elements

• Images/graphics

File size depends on:

• Resolution: dots per inch
• Color depth: bits per pixel (determines the range of possible colours)
• File formats:
• BMP: Bitmap. Uncompressed format à large file size
• JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group. Lossy compression à small file size, commonly used in the internet and supported by most browsers
• GIF: Graphics Interchange Formats. Supports animation and transparency. 256 colours only à not good for photos
• PNG: Portable Network Graphics. Lossless compression à file size bigger than JPEG. Support more colour than GIF à better image quality than GIF

 

• Audio

File size depends on:

• Bit depth/sample resolution: number of bits used in each sample
• Sampling rate: number of samples per second (Hz)
• Duration
• File formats:
• Uncompressed format:
•  WAV: WAVeform audio file. Useful for further editing.
• Compressed format:
• MP3: MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3.
• WMA: Windows Media Audio.

 

• Video

File size affected by:

• Resolution ~image size
• Color depth: number of bits per pixel
• Frame rate – frame rate per second fps
• Duration
• File formats:
• Uncompressed: better video quality
• AVI: Audio Video Interleave
• Compressed: smaller file size
• MP4: MPEG layer 4: support streaming, store other data such as subtitles, scene descriptions
• WMV: Windows Media Video

 

• Digitising multimedia elements

Reasons:

• Online access
• searching
• preservation of the originals
• allow further editing

 

• Compression of file/files

Reasons:

• Reduce file size – less storage space and faster transmission in network
• Sending multiple files as one single file, file structure maintained
• Encryption – security

 

Relevant past paper:

DSE ICT Paper 1B(SP-2017): PP 1c. 2012 3dii,4aii,5abii,iii. 2013 2a,3d. 2014 1b,4di. 2015 5di. 2016 1abc,5bi. 2017 1bc,2ai,b,4c.

 

References:

http://www.cwu.edu/~borisk/311/lecture/311-lec8.html

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/multimedia/multimedia_images_graphics.htm

https://isaaccomputerscience.org/concepts/gcse_data_sound?examBoard=all&stage=all&topic=gcse_data_representation

https://support.biamp.com/General/Video/Video_Basics

https://www.apowersoft.com/what-is-mp4-format.html

http://www.micrographics.co.nz/why-digitise/

https://officeorbiter.com/what-is-file-compression/

 

Learn more:

Example of audio header - https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/8295/MPEG-Audio-Frame-Header

 

A1 Introduction to Information Processing A2. Data Organisation and Data Control

 A1. Introduction to Information Processing

 

Learning Outcomes:

• Define Information Age and discuss the importance of information literacy in a knowledge-based society.
• How the development of technologies leads to the emergence of the Information Age, and how information can be flexibly and analytically converted into knowledge in modern society should be discussed

 

Information age

 

Large amount of information available in the internet.

Individuals have instant access to information.

Information can be flexibly and analytically converted into knowledge.

è Knowledge-based society

 

References:

https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/information-age/14305

 

A2. Data Organisation and Data Control

 

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify data, records, fields, files and databases in the hierarchical organisation of data.
• Explain how records can be organised, stored and retrieved. State the advantages, disadvantages and applications of the two types of file access: direct access and sequential access.
• Discuss the needs of data control.
• Describe how errors can be detected by using validation and parity checking, and prevented by verification and validation

 

File organisation

• Organize by name or date with good folder structure.

 

File access

• Sequential access: e.g. magnetic tape. Data access starts from the beginning until the required information is found or till the end. Used for backup purpose as fast data access not important.
• Direct access: e.g. Hard disk. Data access is almost instant. No need to start searching from the beginning.

 

Error

• Error detection
• Validation: see below
• Parity check: parity bit added to a data. E.g. 1100001, a parity bit can be added such that the sum of all digits are even number. i.e. 11000011
• Error prevention
• Validation: see below, data rejected will not be used
• Verification: check if the data entered is the same as the source document e.g. double entry (such as enter password twice), check by another person
  
  
• Data Validation
• Check whether the input data follows the pre-set rules. E.g. data type, range of integers allowed, format of the string, range of the date entered, parity check. Users will usually be prompted to re-enter the data that confines to the rules.

 

Relevant past paper:

DSE ICT Paper 1B(SP-2017): SP 5bi. PP 5a. 2014 1a. 2015 2aii, 5dii. 2016 1d. 2017 4b.

 

References:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business-insights-ideas/resources/11-ideas-for-how-to-organize-digital-files

https://www.ictlounge.com/html/serial_and_direct_data_access.htm

https://www.safe.com/what-is/data-validation/

https://www.precisely.com/blog/data-quality/data-validation-vs-data-verification

https://teachcomputerscience.com/verification/