3.2.8 Discuss the features, advantages, disadvantages and applications of
specific input and output devices and the media used by each.
Teaching Note:
Students must know the following features: mouse, keyboard, touch
screen, optical character recognition (OCR), magnetic ink
recognition (MICR), scanners (page, mark sense and barcode), LCD
panels, speech recognition, sensors, digital cameras, graphics tablets,
printers, plotters, monitors, robotics, sound. Technical details are not
required unless introduced in the case study.
Sample Question 1:
Outline an application that would make use of a touch screen for input of data. [2 marks]
Sample Question 2:
A car-park opens from 07:30 to 18:00 each day and functions as follows:
When a car is about to enter the car-park, a ticket is issued to the driver and the barrier is raised,
allowing the car to enter.
When the driver wishes to leave, he/she must insert the ticket into the pay-machine and pay the
amount displayed.
(a) Suggest how the pay-machine is able to automatically determine the time of
entry when calculating the cost of parking. [3 marks]
JSR Notes:
If this assessment statement doesn’t cry out CASE STUDY, then none do. Right in the teaching note it says “Technical details not required unless introduced in the case study”. So what you should do right now is think of your particular case study (if you’ve seen it yet), and think of all the various kinds of input and output devices that are included.
And then you look at the statement itself, and address all of the points mentioned:
Features
Advantages
Disadvantages
Application
Media Used
Again, I won’t spoil you by taking each device listed and filling in the required information, but I’ll do one for you as an example:
Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR)
Features – Magnetic ink is used to make symbols whose shapes are variant enough to be able to be easily distinguished by an MICR reader. The characters look similar to regular letters and numbers, but are thicker in places to help distinguish them from others.
Advantages – Fast reading, and secure
Disadvantages – Expensive due to media and readers
Application – Used primarily on bank documents such as checks
Media Used – Magnetic ink on paper
What you need to do is familiarize yourself with all of these input and output devices, particularly the more uncommon ones such as barcode scanner, mark recognition scanner, OCR, plotters, and speech recognition devices. Chances are we will not have spent that much time on each one of them in class, since there are more difficult things to discuss. But if you don’t know what OCR, for example is, then it doesn’t matter how straight-forward and simple it is to explain, you won’t be able to. The textbook does a good job, so refer there, and to the Internet if you need more details or images.