Setting up – 9 marks

In the first Blog entry you must:

Provide a title for their BLOG and project in the format "Gold INGOT project Centre Number, Candidate Number <n> - "Title" (1 mark)

A paragraph providing an outline of your project and a rationale/needs analysis for the project. This should provide a brief analysis of the task. What you are going to do and why. Why is it useful to the community? (1 mark)

You should indicate what information you will need to be successful, (1 mark) including the software tools you intend to use and why. (1 mark)

Make a declaration that any work presented in the Blog is your own. (You teacher should ensure you understand the copyright and licensing issues of using other people's work without permission as well as any evidence of plagiarism [1] being grounds for disqualification) (1 mark)

Make a declaration that your work is made available under the Creative Commons share alike license. [2] This means anyone is free to take and use your work as long as any work they produce with it is freely shared too.  (There is a link at the foot of each Community Site page to an explanation of the CC license and why it is needed. Ensure you understand this) (1 mark)

Provide references to the National Occupational Standards [3] that are relevant to your proposed work. (Minimum of 5 relevant references at level 2) (1 mark)

Provides additional links to the NOS throughout your blog (2 marks)

Dialogue with assessor – 2 marks

The blog must show dialogue with your assessor that has the following characteristics

You makes suggestions about improvements, revisions or changes in plans due to unforeseen circumstances (1 mark)

You respond positively to suggestions made by your assessor (1 mark)

Screen shots and illustrations – 2 marks

Your blog should include graphical illustration. (Pictures or illustrations) These might be screen shots, digital photographs or diagrams you have drawn eg in Inkscape.

(1 mark for using graphical illustrations)

(1 mark for effective use that significantly enhances the work and correctly formats)

File attachments – 3 marks

You must use file attachments to the blog or links to allow digital resources that you have created to be downloaded and/or viewed by other people. These can include data files, digital audio, digital video or still pictures and can include additional explanations and support of your work as well as any actual product that you produce. File sizes should be considered and attached files should not be bigger than 10 Mb in total. Use extracts from lengthy video and audio files rather than the entire file or make links to them putting them on sites that are designed to take big video files eg You Tube or similar.

(1 mark for using relevant attached files)

(1 mark for at least two different file types attached or linked to the blog)

(1 mark if you show an appreciation of the desirability for all attached files to be in data formats that are fully open and not subject to patents or dependent on proprietary software to view or use them)

Quality of communications – 6 marks

(6 marks if you clearly communicate your project so that its line of development is clear including on-going evaluation of the effectiveness of your own and others' use of information sources and ICT tools, using the results to improve the quality of your work and to inform future judgements, 3 marks if the basic idea is apparent but it takes some effort to follow and evaluation and response to it is weak, 1 if the work is available but without any clear structure)

(You will lose 1 mark for if you have not used a spell check to ensure at minimum all non-technical words are correctly spelled. Firefox web browser includes a spell check and is free to download from here [4].)

Time management – 5 marks

(2 marks for keeping clear track of time spent and communicating this to the reader)

(1 mark if the Blog is complete with at least 10 page sized entries or equivalent, 2 marks if work is significant but there is evidence of inefficient use of time eg through lack of focus. 3 marks for productivity reasonably in keeping with 20 hours of guided learning)

Evaluation – 3 marks

Final blog entry should provide an evaluation which

Compares the outcome to what was intended (1 mark)

Says what improvements or enhancements could be made (1 mark)

Provides information about the limitations of the blogging software in achieving your goals (1 mark)

Application developed or service provided – 10 marks

10 marks if work involved demonstrates capability in software tools employed consistent with NOS at level 2, effective use of ICT to explore, develop and interpret information and solve problems in a variety of contexts and if the resources produced are judged useful in their own right as is.

7 marks if work involved demonstrates capability in software tools employed consistent with NOS at level 2, effective use of ICT to explore, develop and interpret information and solve problems in a variety of contexts and if the resources produced are judged useful but need some refinement before fully usable or in the case of services needed external additional support.

5 marks if work involved demonstrates capability in software tools employed consistent with NOS at level 2, effective use of ICT to explore, develop and interpret information and solve problems in a variety of contexts but outcomes are not useful without significant additional work or external support.

3 marks if the work involved demonstrates some capability in software tools employed consistent with NOS at level 2 but a significant proportion is below this level.

1 mark if some attempt has been made to complete the task and some learning has taken place.