Year 9-10 Subject Selection: Help? (1 Viewer)

[PiAndQuadratics]

Hi guys, this is my first thread on BoS so tell me if I've done anything wrong ;p

So I'm in Year 8 at James Ruse, and next week we get to choose electives for Years 9 and 10. This is the list of electives we get to choose from:

• Visual arts
• Drama
• Multi-disciplinary communication (MDC) (WTF is this?!)
• Music
• Design & technology (D&T)
• Information processes & technology (IPT) (accelerated)
• Software design & development (SDD) (accelerated)
• Commerce
• History elective
• Japanese
• Latin
• Chinese
• PASS (Physical activity and sports studies)

At JR we have to choose three electives in order of preference (we only do two in the end), so it looks like my selection will be

1. Commerce
2. History elective/IPT (accelerated)
3. Chinese/SDD (accelerated)

Commerce is practically a must-choose elective for all students at JR, so please don't convince me otherwise. But I'm interested in the others, particularly History elective, IPT and SDD (latter two are both HSC courses). If any of you have done these subjects:

• Is history elective focused primarily on ancient or modern history? (This is kinda important to me because I'm WAY better at modern history)
• Is history elective centred on essay-writing or presentation-making or ACTUALLY KNOWING STUFF, or has this just got to do with the teacher's teaching style? (I did fairly well in Year 7 History because all I did was write really good essays without knowing much about history at all lol, is this the same with History elective?)
• In order to do IPT, how much coding/programming knowledge is required (I have literally none at all, but I'm great with spreadsheets, if that helps lol) and if so, is it realistically possible to learn all that during the time frame of the course? (More importantly, do the teachers teach it, or do you have to learn it yourself?)
• What kind of stuff exactly do you do in IPT (making websites? creating secure + reliable databases? hacking government websites? lol)?
• Since IPT is a HSC course, and I'm guaranteed to do the HSC test in Year 10 if I choose it, how intensive is learning the course content + managing your other school subjects simultaneously?
• With SDD, is it realistically possible to learn all the required coding stuff in the course time frame? (If not, I may as well ditch SDD as an option altogether.)

Thanks a lot in advance, guys!

 

[192pages]

I don't go to James Ruse but I go to a top 70 school so I hope this helps.
Also if anyone thinks my information is wrong, please feel free to correct me, I'm not an expert.
History elective is mainly modern at my school with ancient history topics being taught one or two terms a year.
IPT is creating animations, coding robots, making games and learning about computers. The making websites part is more SDD (I think). I find IPT extremely enjoyable and rewarding but I've seen a couple of students around me not be able to do the assignments due to lack of organisation and planning. Other than that, I do find it hard (rarely) to balance it with my other subjects and find my self sleeping very late (3 to 4AM ish) for an assignment that's only worth 20% of my grade. The coding you can just learn on the way. I didn't know how to code or anything about it but I was able to learn quickly with youtube videos and google searches lol.
For exams in IPT, just read the textbook your teacher gives you and you'll do fine.
Dunno about Chinese or SDD.

Yo yo y Igo to a very lowly ranked school (200+) most kids currently in IPT get b6s, I wanna do SDD so badd cos I loved programming and i think I wanna do computer science ... but im heavily worried about achieving good marks since ppl who choose sdd in other schools hate it and usually drop it...and inthese forums everyone talks badly about sdd so yeh wdy think? Is it worth it? What are your thoughts. and since im already doing IPT would it be easier? (i find ipt enjoyable currently and excel at it).

lol my subject selection form is due in 2 days so hah.. ( p.s. dont judge me cos my school it has its perks )

 

[BLIT2014]

Hi guys, this is my first thread on BoS so tell me if I've done anything wrong ;p

So I'm in Year 8 at James Ruse, and next week we get to choose electives for Years 9 and 10. This is the list of electives we get to choose from:

• Visual arts
• Drama
• Multi-disciplinary communication (MDC) (WTF is this?!)
• Music
• Design & technology (D&T)
• Information processes & technology (IPT) (accelerated)
• Software design & development (SDD) (accelerated)
• Commerce
• History elective
• Japanese
• Latin
• Chinese
• PASS (Physical activity and sports studies)

At JR we have to choose three electives in order of preference (we only do two in the end), so it looks like my selection will be

1. Commerce
2. History elective/IPT (accelerated)
3. Chinese/SDD (accelerated)

Commerce is practically a must-choose elective for all students at JR, so please don't convince me otherwise. But I'm interested in the others, particularly History elective, IPT and SDD (latter two are both HSC courses). If any of you have done these subjects:

• Is history elective focused primarily on ancient or modern history? (This is kinda important to me because I'm WAY better at modern history)
• Is history elective centred on essay-writing or presentation-making or ACTUALLY KNOWING STUFF, or has this just got to do with the teacher's teaching style? (I did fairly well in Year 7 History because all I did was write really good essays without knowing much about history at all lol, is this the same with History elective?)
• In order to do IPT, how much coding/programming knowledge is required (I have literally none at all, but I'm great with spreadsheets, if that helps lol) and if so, is it realistically possible to learn all that during the time frame of the course? (More importantly, do the teachers teach it, or do you have to learn it yourself?)
• What kind of stuff exactly do you do in IPT (making websites? creating secure + reliable databases? hacking government websites? lol)?
• Since IPT is a HSC course, and I'm guaranteed to do the HSC test in Year 10 if I choose it, how intensive is learning the course content + managing your other school subjects simultaneously?
• With SDD, is it realistically possible to learn all the required coding stuff in the course time frame? (If not, I may as well ditch SDD as an option altogether.)

Thanks a lot in advance, guys!

IPT/ SDD will be more intense most likely as they are year 11/12 courses. When you do your HSC you'll still be having to manage your time with other HSC level courses, so might be a good idea to do an HSC exam as early as possible so you have to do less units for years 11/12.

 

[BLIT2014]

Look at page 20 of http://www.dramansw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Drama-NSW-Conference-Program-2018-v2.pdf for information relating to MDC. Looks to be a drama type communication course that has been developed by a JR teacher.