Computer Science A level OCR for Year 13

Computer Science A level OCR for Year 13

Easter Revision Course Dates

• Week 1: 30 March – 3 April
• Week 2: 6 April – 10 April
• Week 3: 13 April – 17 April

(Good Friday is 3 April; Easter Monday is 6 April)

Boards

OCR H446

Length of Course

5 full-day sessions

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a concise revision of the exam theory required to meet the demands of the A level qualification, together with advice on examination technique specific to the OCR A level examinations.

The time allocated to a unit for the content will involve revision of key points of each point within that unit, with illustrations of how that subject matter may be examined in the unit examination.

The half day allocated for examination technique and practice will be used to look at identifying the requirements of questions and applying the theory learned to the questions to maximise marks.

1.1 The characteristics of contemporary processors, input, output and storage devices.

• Components of a computer and their uses
• Structure and function of the processor
• Types of processor
• Input, output and storage

1.2 Software and software development

Types of software and the different methodologies used to develop software

• Systems Software
• Applications Generation
• Software Development
• Types of Programming Language

1.3 Exchanging data
How data is exchanged between different systems

• Compression, Encryption and Hashing
• Databases
• Networks
• Web Technologies

1.4 Data types, data structures and algorithms
How data is represented and stored within different structures. Different algorithms that can be applied to these structures

• Data Types
• Data Structures
• Boolean Algebra

1.5 Legal, moral, cultural and ethical issues
The individual moral, social, ethical and cultural opportunities and risks of digital technology. Legislation surrounding the use of computers and ethical issues that can or may in the future arise from the use of computers

• Computing related legislation
• Moral and ethical issues

2.1 Elements of computational thinking
Understand what is meant by computational thinking

• Thinking abstractly
• Thinking ahead
• Thinking procedurally
• Thinking logically
• Thinking concurrently

2.2 Problem solving and programming
How computers can be used to solve problems and programs can be written to solve them.

• Programming techniques
• Computational methods

2.3 Algorithms
The use of algorithms to describe problems and standard algorithms

• Algorithms