O/A/IGCSE Computer Science Blog

Zafar Ali Khan & Computer Science Marathons ------ Zakathon The marathons that you usually hear about start off with multiple candidates but only one winner. It is every man for himself and there are plenty of those who don’t make it. The marathon that I’ve been leading my students on since a span of seven years is slightly different though. Every journey of a successful venture has fond memories attached to it. Spanning over 7 years from 2012-2018, the journey has been an incredible one for us. I came up with the concept of Zakathon —marathon sessions of Computer Science revision classes held prior to CAIE exams in the month of May. In Zakathon, we all operate as a single team. We do not run against each other, but with each other. Here there are no tracks for you to run — just O/A levels computer science lectures that you must grasp for hours on end to reach your ultimate goal. My students are athletes but of a different kind — they put in their blood, sweat and tears fo...

Student life, a stressed commodity where supposedly every thing is in chaos, but amidst that chaos, some students emerge like the knight in shining armor. The debatable point here is that how’re those students different than those who’re always stressed but are not achieving enough in their academics. It is absolutely true when Albert Einstein said that: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  But it is also a fact that hard work always overcomes talent. There are a few important factors that come into play when students think that they are not achieving well because of the “Stress of education” in their lives, the most important being time management. The distinguishing line between a high achieving student and a stressed student is that the high achiever doesn’t start to study at the 11th hour. Studying before hand can be a game changer for any student, but if you prioriti...

Computer Sciences vs. Computer Engineering. What to choose? Its nearly that time of the year, when A2 and Second Year Students are searching for options and universities to apply in for their higher education. Where many fields are clear that in what they are offering, curriculum in Computer fields are unclear to students. Students interested in the field of IT are utterly confused between Computer Engineering and Computer Sciences as the boundary between the two fields is thought to be blurred. However, this is not true, as we shall see. You people would probably know the difference between hardware and software, right? That is simply the difference between ENGINEERING and SCIENCES. In Computer Engineering, the main focus is towards the hardware side, such as designing new and better processors, storage mediums, etc. There is some focus towards the software side as well, though. So, it can be thought to be a mixture of Electronics Engineering and Computer Sciences, where you...