[Stephen Stewart]

27/11/2013 at 4:05 pm

Hi All,

I have turned my attention to the report for SDD. Outcome 3.

I have been looking at the template the SQA have given us and the exemplars. The amount of writing there for a National 4 candidate in their exemplars is a bit excessive. When you compare this with the marking scheme or the assessment judgement it seems they dont actually have to write that much.

3.1 Describe 3 features
3.2 Explain 1 construct and and one data type
3.3 Explain one example of the impact on the environment

Has anyone done this report yet at National 4 level and have what length are the reports?

On another note I am looking to do this on an app such as Angry Birds, the popular game for smartphones. This is fine as SQA state it can be done on a mobile application. My question is the 1 construct they have to explain how specific does it need to be?

Could they say for example, one construct used in the game is to select what level so…

IF level selected = 3:
launch level 3

Or to restart a game

IF restart = touched:
restart game

Or do you think they need to be more specific?

[Stephen Stewart]

27/11/2013 at 4:09 pm

Also if this is okay to do then what would the purpose of a mobile game such as Angry Birds or Temple Run be? For enjoyment and some fun? To compete with friends?

[Linda Hall]

27/11/2013 at 6:25 pm

I too think this is a difficult task for National 4 candidates, see previous discussion. We are using TrackMania. I discussed with class where programming constructs eg if and loops might be used in a scratch racing game. In addition we discussed searching, sorting in a database and spell check in a word processor. Looping for all records and words etc and if there is a match a record was found or if there was no matching spell check it was highlighted. In addition I do not think the judging criteria matches what they have been asked to do.

Whether or not Angry Birds is ok I do not know but your could it purpose was to encourage coordination skills and problem solving?

I would be looking for similar in Trackmania and in addition an encouragement for users to create their own game etc.

[Stephen Stewart]

28/11/2013 at 3:43 pm

I have had a quick go at this myself and done it on a smartphone game called Bad Piggies. Does this look okay? It should be attached.

[Kirsteen Nakau]

29/11/2013 at 8:58 am

excellent example just what the kids need, they will all engage more too when writing about a game they are already familiar with.