“Candidates were not advantaged by defining every type of operating system provided as examples in the explanatory notes of the standard. Candidates who defined each type of operating system often relied heavily on internet sources and tended to provide verbatim definitions with no attempt at describing an operating system’s key features or explaining the purpose in their own words. Effective reports focused on describing the key features and explaining the purpose of the operating system(s) that the candidates were familiar with using in their classwork or at home.”

Identify and describe key features of the OS as those key features relate to the management of information. To demonstrate understanding, use of student voice is essential. Students should provide examples of how they interact with the operating system and the key features they access to complete their day-to-day computer tasks.

Reasons for non-achievement (from the NZQA Report): –provided lists of key features of application software or operating systems with no related descriptions –provided a rote definition of an operating system without related descriptions of the key features Not Achieved

Key Feature is identified and also described in relation to how they used it to manage information. “The Tasks of the operating system are The Loading and running applications so that the user can use it without any hassle. The track of memory space so that the user knows when they are close to using all of the memory in their computer. Manage password security is important because you want to keep your computer safe from anyone who wants to get into it. For example I have a password for my school account so that I only can get access to my account and no one else, same with my Internet. Allow hardware to communicate with the software to load applications and other sorts of programs that the user would like to use. Move data to and from the hard drive with other storage devices such as a USB that helped me specifically when it came to shifting my data of projects from my windows to my MacOS. Allows the file management of creating folders, copying files, deleting files. This is something I used when I had to sort my different sorts of data separate to each other do I didn’t get confused with what I was creating, copying and naming. Allows the user to communicate commands to the computer for example if I wanted to open Microsoft word I would only have to simply click on it and then the computer will open it for me so that I can use it. Multi tasking It allows you to be able to have more that one document open at a time, allowing you to access more than one website if you are researching something. For example if I had to be on my s and send a link or find some information at the same time the computer will multi task to let me go on more than one application at a time to do what you need to do. Achieved

Demonstrate in-depth understanding of basic concepts of information management involves: –explaining the purpose of operating systems … to manage information. (EN2) From the NZQA Report: –explained the purpose of an operating system and related their descriptions of the key features to the operating system’s purpose –explained how they utilised an operating system’s key features in their daily work by providing descriptive examples or annotated screen captures

Merit

“… The operating system is the managing piece of software. Its job is to manage the overall functioning of a computer. It communicates with the hardware devices connected to your computer and your application software. Your application software does not communicate with your computer hardware. No, this is the operating system’s responsibility. For example, when you press “save” on a word document your operating system is sending a message to your computer hardware. It knows about every device plugged into your computer. Your operating system also allows you to copy and paste between different applications, which is a tool used by users almost every day. Often, we take advantage of the operating system’s features without even realising that we are doing it. On the school network desktop computers, we use a Windows operating system but on our laptops, we use a Mac OS X operating system. Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages but are quite similar in the tasks they perform. They are both “GUI” operating systems, which stands for graphical user interface. This means that things such as the applications and commands are represented by graphics and it is easier to the average computer user because people relate well with images. There are also “CLI” operating systems, which most people do not use anymore because they are a lot more complex than a “GUI” operating..”