Computers are changing the world – rapidly

General introduction to the site

Computers and organisations using computers (leadership, strategy, etc)

Hey. I’m J of J curve and I have a confession that I want to get off my back straight away: I’m not super smart and I take a long time to learn and understand things. I have to go over things over and over again looking into very odd details about how things work. One of those things is computers which I’ve been fascinated by over the years. I’ve forgotten more than I remember so I thought I’d write a few things down for my memory and perhaps help you understand just how computers work from the fundamental understanding of electricity, through electronics (which I still struggle with), on to computer hardware, then connected computers – computer networks, and finally computer programs or software.

Starting at the beginning: GCSE Computer Science

The primary reason for j-curve is to explain how computers work and in to give some structure I’m going to follow the first qualification that many have to ordeal and that is computer science GCSE. A GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) is a school leavers exam for those in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (Scotland has National 5 (N5)as an equivalent). There are four GCSE exam boards (AQA, OCR, Persons and WJEC Eduqas) that all offer computer science as a GCSE with roughly the same structure: 2 papers – 1) computer systems (hardware, networking, ethics) and 2) computer programming (software development). For more information about GCSE computer science from these boards read my page on GCSE Computer Science which gives specific detail for each exam and some resources. I’ll be using the OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (Royal Society of Arts)) as it’s the one that my kids have used through their GCSEs and so have the most knowledge about (as I said it doesn’t really matter which board you pick as the syllabuses.

GCSE Computer Science OCR Syllabus

1. J277/01: Computer systems (80 marks – 50% exam – 1’30”)
   • 1.1 Systems architecture
   • 1.2 Memory and storage
   • 1.3 Computer networks, connections and protocols
   • 1.4 Network security
   • 1.5 Systems software
   • 1.6 Ethical, legal, cultural and environmental impacts of digital technology
2. J277/02: Computational thinking, algorithms and programming (80 marks – 50% exam – 1’30
   • 2.1 Algorithms
   • 2.2 Programming fundamentals
   • 2.3 Producing robust programs
   • 2.4 Boolean logic
   • 2.5 Programming languages and Integrated Development Environment (IDE)