Computer Studies / Computing

Course summary

“The rise of Google, the rise of Facebook, the rise of Apple, I think are proof that there is a place for computer science as something that solves problems that people face every day.” Eric Schmidt. “Computer science is the new Latin, because it underpins the digital world in the way Latin underpinned the analogue world.” Ian Livingstone CBE. "Unless we make computer science a priority, we risk making gender, class, and racial disparities worse as jobs flow to those with a computer science background." Susan Wojcicki. Computer Systems: • Structure and function of processors including the fetch decode execute cycle, assembly language using the Little Man Computer instruction set; • Types and functions of operating systems including scheduling techniques and memory management techniques; • Software development methodologies including the principles of Agile development; • Compression techniques; • Encryption - both symmetric and asymmetric; • Networks - hardware, threats and protocols; • Number systems - representing numbers in hexadecimal and binary including negative numbers and non integers; • Social, moral, ethical and legal issues with digital technology; • Boolean logic and Boolean algebra including Karnaugh maps. Algorithms and Programming: • HTML, CSS and JavaScript; • Standard algorithms - binary search and bubble, insertion, merge and quick sorts; • SQL to query data in a relational database; • Linear and non-linear data structures; • Object oriented programming - inheritance, polymorphism