Unit 1: Data Handling and Communication

1. ICT Report Bromsgrove International Home Computer Survey By Sam Ritchie Introduction Year 9 did a survey finding out about home (or boarding) computer use for the students in Bromsgrove to find out what things they were able to do at home, such as print, access the internet, or even whether they had a computer they could access. center1031240Summary This is an interesting result, showing that, between years 8, 9 and 10, the percent that have their own computers in Year 8 is higher than the percent in year 9. I personally think that this is interesting because I would expect a higher amount of older people to have their own computers than younger people. The downward slope between Year 11, Year 10 and Year 9 is expected though; it is only the 11% difference between Year 8 and 9 that is curious. This interesting result could have been because the Year 8s or 9s misunderstood the question and understood it as ‘Do you have a computer in your house?’ centertop In comparison to the last result, this is very contradicting. Even though 95% of students in year 10 have their own computer, 95% of students in year 10 have to share their computers. I find this interesting because the idea was that if you ‘had your own computer’ you would not have to share it. It is the same for every single year on the chart. This is a very interesting result because it shows the differences in computer usage between Boarders and Day Students. It shows that, while some boarders do play games, many more day students do. It also shows that more boarders spend their time doing homework. Conclusion The most important result that was received during this survey was the ‘Do you have access to a computer?’ question. Out of 91, a whole 23 have absolutely no access outside of school. As you can see, it may not seem like much at first but it is a whole quarter of the students that do not have access to a computer. Further examination of the question reveals that 8 out of 23 of those students are day students, meaning that they barely have access to a computer during the week. That is a whole third of the students that did not have access to a computer outside of school. I conclude that while there are many that can freely use a computer, this is a problem, and I think everybody should have access to a computer, especially for education. As for the other questions, namely the third, it shows that the discipline for the boarders means that they use the computer for homework and educating subjects much more than the day students.