Personalised Feedback Sheet for IGCSE Section 1 Types and Components of Computers

Name: Hayden Barrett

Target grade:
Score on this assessment: 27/58
Grade for this assessment: E

General feedback/class needs:
On the plus side, most of you understood what hardware and software is and could identify
examples of each. Also, most of you managed to do well with a bit of common sense on the
true/false questions.
However, overall performance in this test by the whole class was poor. Basic knowledge was lacking
and it was painfully evident that most students had not prepared or revised properly for this test.
Worst of all, students were not even reading questions carefully and provided poor answers which
had nothing to do with the question.
Common issues:
USB is NOT a storage device. In fact the answer USB is useless in any question, it means
Universal Serial Bus, and there are countless devices that use it. You must specify WHAT USB device,
A USB Memory stick for example, otherwise your answer is meaningless.
RAM and ROM clearly many students had not learned the definitions, were confused as to the
meaning of the word Volatile and could not provide adequate descriptions as to what each does and
is for.
Operating Systems Students could not explain what it does, worse, virtually no one understood the
advantages and disadvantages of GUIs and CLIs, despite this being clearly written in your notes.
Reading the question countless marks were lost due to students not reading a question carefully
and giving a totally irrelevant answer.
Your personal targets (to be filled in during the lesson):
1. To revise effectively for each test not just reading notes, but doing practise questions from
lessons or from the websites provided to me by my teacher
2. To revise the components of a computer and their functions
3. To ensure I always read the question carefully and double check that my answer is relevant
to the question
Review
Give an example of a backing storage device?
Some of the answers I did good like for the true or false ones because I had the knowledge
for those types on choosing the right answer. But I did do much better on explaining what
ROM and RAM means and the differences between them.

Give one disadvantage of a GUI.
These sort of questions I do struggle on,
I didnt really understand what Graphical User Interface meant so it was hard in the first
place to answer this question


Challenge/Extension
You will have been allocated an exam question to further your knowledge or help you to overcome a
misconception. Copy out the question here in full and answer it.

Describe 4 features of ROM
ROM Is non volatile
Read Only Memory is what it stands for
When you switch off the computer it only remembers what happened before