IA Design Technology IA Issues

[Design Techy]

Hi all,

im currently taking Design Technology and currently being the leading student in our school for the Major Projects / IA's. I tend to collaborate with my teachers about issues with the guidelines and many of the problems that tend to arise. If you have recently heard about the new exemplar that has been released with a grade of 47/54 you may have many questions of which may be similar to mine, and that the issue you may also be talking with other students is the lack of attention that this subject is getting. I wanted to discuss the formats of the MP and all issues involving it as I need to hear other persectives. as well as other issues you are having so we can all come to a consensus and work this out together.

Format:

I looked at the exemplar format and it was not to MLA, where as I thought we would need MLA to an extent. we all know the format but we are restricted In page numbers not words, therefore I assume that double spacing, and all but font size and style are discounted for as if I double space, I halve the content I can write. Furthermore I evaluated the format of the exemplar and noticed the margins were not to the MLA's inch standard, more like 1cm or a half. After doing some calculations I found it was 180 extra words per page, that being used as words or pictures. while its not a lot for one page, do remember we have 44 pages, so it equates to around an extra 8000 words. That's the difference between 6's and 7's in the major project. I don't want to be at a disadvantage for not using as much of the page as I can when im restricted to the amount I have. therefore i may stretch my margins so i can access the full potential of my pages. otherwise its wasted space.

 

other issues:

i speak for my class on this one, ive done GCSE's in the past and did DT, so i have around 7 years of DT practice in my pocket by now, and i do it out side of school as a hobby. I am personally finding this project a stretch to meet everything they ask in the mere 60 hours we have. Many people don't have the technical skill to pull of what needs to be done unless they do it as a hobby. My issue here is, i wanted to know what others had on this perspective as my fellow classmates only have about half to a quarter of my experience and i can see that its no so straightforward for some. does help but were kind of in a country where it takes 5 months or a year to get anything shipped to so =P, or it wont arrive. any thoughts by others.

 

 

On another note, there haven't been any specimen papers and on the OSC there is no DT revision section, any one have sources, i just feel as though this subject is getting neglected, we don't even have a text book for the new course, where as i take physics and there's tones of stuff to use, DT isn't as strait forward, its a huge field as is heavily based on perspective due to it being somewhat of an art.