The Department aims to prepare all pupils for the inevitable contact they will have with using technology to exploit information in public examinations, across the curriculum, out of school and later in their lives. All pupils are expected to be familiar with computers and IT is an integral part of all subjects at GCSE and A level.

Years 7 to 10
The course is of a practical 'Hands-on' nature with an emphasis on work to support other curriculum areas. In Years 7 to 10, these are in the form of discrete ICT lessons, although other departments cover some of the topics. The course is being constantly reviewed and further amendments are planned in the near future.

Pupils are taught to become critical and largely autonomous users of ICT, aware of the ways in which ICT tools and information sources can help them in their work; understand the limitations of such tools and of the results they produce; and use the concepts associated with ICT systems and software and the associated technical terms.

Pupils are given opportunities to:

• use ICT equipment and software autonomously;
• consider the purposes for which information is to be processed and communicated;
• use their knowledge and understanding of ICT to design information systems, and to evaluate and suggest improvements to existing systems;
• investigate problems by modelling, measuring and controlling, and by constructing ICT procedures;
• consider the limitations of ICT tools and information sources, and of the results they provide, and compare their effectiveness and efficiency with other methods of working;
• discuss some of the social, economic, ethical and moral issues raised by ICT.

Pupils are taught to:

• use a range of ICT equipment and software efficiently to create good quality presentations for particular audiences, integrating several forms of information;
• select appropriate ICT equipment and software to fulfil their specific purposes;
• be systematic in their use of appropriate search methods to obtain accurate and relevant information from a range of sources;
• collect and amend quantitative and qualitative information for a particular purpose, and enter it into a data-handling package for processing and analysis;
• interpret, analyse and display information, checking its accuracy and questioning its plausibility.
• plan, develop, test and modify sets of instructions and procedures to control events;
• use a system that responds to data from sensors and explain how it makes use of feedback
• use ICT equipment and software to measure and record physical variables;
• explore a given model with a number of variables and create models of their own, in order to detect patterns and relationships;
• modify the rules and data of a model, and predict the effects of such changes;
• evaluate a computer model by comparing its behaviour with data gathered from a range of sources.

Full details of all  Information and Communication Technology courses, including worksheets, podcasts and software demonstration lessons complete with voiceovers can be found by following this link.

www.kesbathict.co.uk