Christopher E- As Applied Ict 06/07

The 1998 data protection act extended that of 1984, including paper based data.The law was introduced to help answer those what-if questions...who will be able to access the information?,will it be vunerable to hackers?, may my information be sold on?...
However they were exceptions to the law...if the information required was to safeguard the national security, if used for the prevention/detection of crime and if the data was used strictly for the collection of taxes.
Therefore the rights of individuals include to have any errors corrected, compensation for any distress caused as result of the act being broken, to see data held on themselves within 40 days days of payment and to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress.
The act generally provided individuals with certain rights and impossed penalties for the breaking of the law.

VIP: This homework set by Emmet and the previous homework from Phillip should be reffered to in our coursework we are beginning.

The homework from Phillip was to find, type and publish the aims & penalties of each act along with three other examples.

Computer Misuse Act 1990:

Aim: An Act to make provision for securing computer material against unauthorised access or modification; and for connected purposes.

Penalty:A person guilty of an offence under this act shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both.(£5000)

Example:

(1)Any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer;

(2)To impair the operation of any computer;

(3) To impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data.

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Aim:It gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works the right to control the ways in which their material may be used. The rights cover: Broadcast and public performance, copying, adapting, issuing, renting and lending copies to the public. In many cases, the creator will also have the right to be identified as the author and to object to distortions of his work.

Penalty:2 year imprisonment and a fine

Example:

(1)Using software under the terms of the liscence

(2)Illegal copy or distribution of product unless strictly for back-up purposes, under the terms of the liscence.

(3) Fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical … for the purposes of research for a non-commercial purpose does not infringe any copyright in the work provided it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

Information may be presented in a range of formats however it is vital that the information presented is done so in the most appropiate format. This would depend on several factors such as the nature & complexety of information, the needs, target audience, life-span of information etc.

This topic was provided by Ben and for homework he assigned four questions to be answered.

What is interal information?
Internal refers to produced or required information retrieved within the bounds of the company. i.e. is directly related to the resources, transactions etc.

What is external information?
External is produced or required information retrieved by individuals or organisations outside the compnays boundries.

Distinguish the different methods of communicating the information:

• Internal ---> Internal
• External ---> Internal
• Internal ---> External

Give examples of each:

• information such as accounts, performance reports, development plans & historic anaylsis.
• data relating to reports generated on general trends, customer/client perference etc.
• Shareholders, government bodies and financial institutions require information to keep tabs on the company.

Below is the spider diagram set for h/wk from John and my addition on the quality of information: Freemind was unavailable so i created one using word:

Information Value:
Good information ( that is timely, accurate, up-to date, complete etc) adds value to the organisation in the following ways:

• To aid decision-making: provides better surafce for essential decisons hence improving organisation`s succesfulness
• To monitor and control: This process may enhance the company as information will help the organisation stay informed and ensure overall efficency generally.
• Target resources: information about customers' buying habits are extremely valuable etc and can help the company become more profitable.
• To gain competitive advantage: information will alow indication of the strenghts and weaknesses and help improve its competitive edge.

To conclude information needs to be of good standard to add value to the company and more so, incure cost.

Information Cost:

In order to produce good quality information, data must be...

• Data collection: Data collected directly for example questionnairs or indirectly were a third party may have to recieve payment to gain acces to the information in their possesion.
• Data entry: Data will take some time to add and in such a case operators may be paid to do so.
• Data processing: Once the data is entered it must be proccesed which will need software, costing money and improve the organisations ICT resources.
• Data maintainence: Similarily their are costs envolved ensuring data remains accurate and up to date, this will only occur if changes are reported and the appropiate records are amended. This involves communicating with cutoimers and verifying that their details are correct.

To summarise; to produce good quality information this will ineviatble cost in terms of time, money and human resourcesn

Basically, data is processed to provide information to contribute assistance for whatever need. Anaylsts futhermore apply the knowledge on trends etc and subsequently draw conclusions.

1)Data may be defined as a collection of values.
2)Information is data that has been made meaningful, i.e. the potenntial meaning of thedata has been realised.
3)Knowledge maybe defined as a broad understanding of thecontext in which a particular piece of information occurs.
4)Data represents a collection of values(facts & figures) hpowever offers little meaning until is processed.
5)Inofrmation must be processed into a form accesible for it to serve a purpose; you may do this by transforming data into a different format, sorting and grouping it, organising it into a table etc.

For the purpose of this section we had to create a powerpoint presentation outlining the importance of virus protection sofware on behalf of Rocketshakers and help define the purpose and meaning of disk and file managment. The presenation was also to include an introduction, the use of the master slide with the inclusion of action buttons: Below shows the beginning of the task with the layout of the master slide evident(view>master>masterslide.)
Currently I am experiencing difficuilty in not knowing the correct information to include; I intend of having this task complete for thursday otherwise get help from Mr Barr.

Earlier on the school year we were asked to use freemind to design a spider diagram about several applications for the computer... here is a screenshot showing the result:
Freemind allows for effective sumary of information and this particular document explained application software in who they are used and several examples. This tool may prove useful in revising for exams etc.

Task one asked for several things: insert text into particular cells, use count, format cells to currency and simple formulas:
Task two required several changes also including:Absolute cell referncing, formula view:
Finally task three and four asked me to produce an IF statment, simple formulas, formula view and fit all relevant data into one a4 page:
This concluded the excel section.

The first request of the word processing section was to copy out a letterhead exactly and incorporate merged fileds into it through mail merge using the NOFEES query. Ensuring only members from Lisburn appeared. Below shows the word document exaclty as requested:It thens continues to ask for the fisrt and last letter which belong to Michael Devine & Anne Limb.

This ends the Word Processing section.

Task 1 required me to open the database table AGEGROUP and add a new field EXACTLY:

Task 2 needed a validation rule created and validation text to complement it: The rule was "A" or "B" or "C" ...

Task 3 asked to use the relationship feature to create a one to many relationship with the AGEGROUP and FEE table(right click> select realtionships>right click>showtables>insert table> drag and drop> tick the box enforce referntial integrity.):

Task 4 just asked to insert new data into the firld Feecode: (Ensure all data copied as appears exactly on exam!!):

Task 5 needed a query to be created. To do so i selected "query>design view and insert relevant table and fields-in question- and then under surname sort:ascending and for criteria for feespaid "no" and date joined "<01/10/05"(neither>

Task 6 just asked for a screenshot produced on the design view showing all criteria:

Unfortunately i was unable to complete the 7th and 8th task. I am unaware on who to create a report and even though the 8th apperas simple i need to use the report created so am unable to complete. I need to ask Mr Barr to explain for me.

This now ends the database section of the exam.

Evaluation of Previous Year

Attention / Conduct in Class
Throughout the previous year I have messed around and chatted continuously and contributed to disrupting my neighbors and inevitably slowed down their rate of progress. This is not acceptable and during the upcoming terms I hope to change and become more attentive and contribute more in class. I admit that even though I have not been particularly worried, I need to work continually and progress. I have not been scolded by the teacher a lot but he has had to speak with me to remind me to stay focused on some occasions.
Academic Performance
I feel my acadmeic performance to date has been pretty good.Intially I have coped well in end of uint class exams; passing them all by several marks however much of my information needs to be refined and I must begin to revise as proved by my disastorus christmas mock exam proves were I achieved a U.I guess that my exam technique was poor and that I have to begin to review past information to ensure my success at the real exam in May. Through constant repetation of work and revision of Data I should be able to achieve this target of getting an A.
Practical Skills Acquired
Throughout the previous year I have done all work asked of me which helped me with my practical skills and also additional worked carried out at the house assisted in improving this. However after evaluating my christmas exam performance I need to improve further to help my chances of achieving a good grade in the final exams in May. By spending more time developing techniques etc I will most certainingly gain from more time in my exams and sufficent work. I have attempted to use several methods in applications to achieve specific goals and were the most of this im confidant using however I need to tweak and improve some also.
Time Spent Out of Class
During the last term I have not used the study to my benefit as I failed to use it on numerous occasions as it was too much of a bother for me which is definitely the wrong attitude to take. Granted I have came into school early and practised some of the methods/techniques shown during class time. Also I have used the house a lot in doing homeworks and general revision. I made use of the resources as I copied some of the programs from school as I could experiment with them at the house and also sometimes I used the library during my study periods for As Applied ICT.
Responsibility for Own learning
Generally I have responded well to independent learning and ineviatable coming to class prepared as homeworks were always done(except one occasion), all required knowledge was known(e.g. password) and I updated my Blog on a regular basis. I constantly reffered to Mr Barr`s blog for work updates and assignments. Also I came to class with the specified books etc and when unsure about who to go about things I would ask the assitance of Mr Barr. To conclude however there is definitely room for improvement for my overall approach and attitude to the subject.

For the purpose of this exercise I will be delivering a class lesson about The quality of information; specifically the areas “timely, Up to date, Has User Confidence and Relevant.” To do so I will create a lesson plan with the aid of a PowerPoint to visually enhance the information im teaching and will continue to give homework to test the topic I taught.The homework being a simple exercise of reviewing the information in the design of a spider diagram. I will continue to mark this and review and evaluate my performance as teacher. This learning experience may help me in appreciating the difficulty of teaching a class and inevitable improve my class attitude. Furthermore i should take in the topic im teaching more so , hopefully.

Below are screenshots of the powerpoint presentation I was to teach the rest of the class with(Also not included was a lesson plan):