Cindy,
The current exam requirements state:
Only componets from the Java Foundation Classes(Swing components) should be used.
As far as what the requirements will be for the beta exam I am not sure.
A good book on design patterns is "Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. Addison-Wesley is the publisher. Also good is searching this forum. Popular patterns used are Factory, Facade and MVC.
Mike