OK it’s week 4 of the term but welcome back to the new year anyway ….

Well it’s been a few weeks since we’ve updated the blog so a fair bit to add now. Firstly we were really pleased with the GCSE and A level results in the department this year - they were the best ever for GCSE and very good for the A level - of course this means that it’s a hard act to follow this year but we are pretty hopeful

2 new courses have started as well, at A level we’ve introduced the applied ICT course which so far seems to be very interesting, it’s a refreshing change to have a course where we are looking at the real applications of ICT and not rehashing the benefits of the laser printer etc. At GCSE level we’ve introduced the ICT Nationals to run alongside the AIDA/CIDA course. Only a small group of students for this first year but they are making a really good start and the course is moving quite quickly. Year 9 have started the AIDA/CIDA course as well and we have now rewritten key stage 3 so that we can cover the programme of study in years 7 and 8 so that the current year 9 can get the equivalent of 2 GCSEs in ICT by the time they finish.

Mr Douthwaite has joined us this year as well and has brought a whole lot of new ideas and fresh enthusiasm to the department, in particular with the xgames league which he has started working on with one of his year 10 classes (a bunch of xbox whizzes).

2 of our students Joel and Joe have been developing the missionmaker club and so far it has been so popular they have had to start a waiting list as they have got over 25 pupils and only 1 room of computers. On a Thursday night they are building and designing the games like mad. Similarly the CC4G club has got off to a good start for the year.

All in all ICT has been pretty exciting so far this year - all I’ve got to do now is try and keep up to date with entries on the blog!

PS sorry for all the stuff I’ve left out but you could add an entry here if you want to

Well, everyone’s on holiday now (except for the technicians in ICT who are setting up for the new year).

So … what to do while on holiday? There’s a new ICT room being set up for Applied Art in room 41, new computers in food Tech and in textiles and the science labs will have some more laptops (new ones this time :)). But … how does this help? New computers are fine but do they make the school a better place to learn in? I think so but it does depend on what we do with them, if all they are used for is producing fancy front covers for projects then paper and a pack of pens would be just as good!!!

This has led me to think about the kind of things we teach in the ICT department and how it can be made more interesting. We’ve got to teach some basic skills, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, slide shows etc. but over the last few years we’ve tried to add a few extras such as blogging, podcasting, video editting and the like. We’ve also got to keep an eye on exam results for those higher up the school so that they get the GCSEs and A levels they need for later. Ideally though this should leave us some time to teach other things that are important, useful and interesting like internet safety, wikis, social networking and we will be trying to build these into our courses over the next year or so.

I’ve also been looking at the possibilities for using games in lessons and 2 pupils have set up a club to design and build computer games with a purpose using a program called Missionmaker. Finally, there is an interesting site on the net called secondlife and this allows people to interact using 3d avatars and to build and design their own spaces. A search on ‘education uk’ will find their island in the secondlife world and a space to build parts of courses. Could this be a way of making ICT course more exciting?

(Now you know how ICT teachers spend the summer ;> )

Enjoy the sunshine when it happens and see you in September.

During this week we have been creating the BCS revision glossary using Google docs.  How easy/hard did you find it to do? Were there any problems with using it?  How much do you think it will help your revision?

 Use your digitalbrain (thomasadams.net) usernames when you comment.

Thanks

 RG, MNT, MJH

Now that you have chosen your groups and started to create your work on the podcast - how about an update?  Why not share your topics and what progress you are making with the rest of hte year so they can see what to expect when they click on the podcasts!!

Remember to use your Thomasadams usernames

Well, it’s half-term and we’re changing again.  This time it’s Mrs Atwal who is leaving to become 2nd in department at the Abraham Darby school in Telford.  We’re always sorry to see people go but hope that she’ll be really happy in her new school.  Watch this space because that means we’ll be getting another IT teacher soon.  In the meantime Mr Daniels and Mrs Jones will be helping out in ICT in years 7 8 and 9 and I get to play on the Xbox with year 10 (I think I’m going to get slaughtered!).

Well we’re back into the new year and the year 8 website unit is almost complete.  Use this post to add your comments about the unit - how hard/easy was it?  Did you enjoy it and why?  What did you do well?  How could you make it better? - Remember to use your username for your comments

Well it’s Christmas and Mrs Medlicott is leaving us to take up a new job in Bishop’s Castle. Mrs M is really going to be missed and will be a hard act to follow! All today pupils have been coming up to say goodbye.

In January we have a new teacher Mrs Colgan who is joining us for 2 terms in ICT - she’s come from a school in Stockport and will be teaching on almost all the courses we offer.

Merry Christmas to everyone

Today Year 9 have been using the Audacity program to record sound and save mp3s for later playing. this will be used for podcasts in the future - probably on the school website.

Audacity can be downloaded for free from sourceforge - the link is here http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

For the first few weeks of the year, you have been studying what is meant by bias and working out how to tell if a web site is reliable.   Tell us what you think of the work you have done - was it interesting?  could it be better?  did you share any ideas with anyone else about the unit?

Remember to use your digital brain login when posting

We are getting some presentations ready about different types of communication - including blogs!  You could leave a comment here about your topic and about what you think of the presentations you’ve seen.