How the department is organised. Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4
The 4 themes of the Key Stage 3 strategy:
Finding things out
This theme is about
understanding what makes information, about motivating enquiry and making pupils’ independent study more focused and productive. Pupils need to learn:
how to access
information from an increasingly wide variety of sources;
to recognise the
origin of information and to judge its accuracy, validity and possible bias;
to assess how useful
and relevant a source of information and its contents will be for a particular enquiry or piece of research.
The theme also
addresses how to use ICT to find things out from collected data, and in particular
how pupils might:
identify exactly
what information is required to solve a problem, complete a task or answer a
question;
assess the value and
validity of what they read, see and hear;
find, collect and
store data efficiently, and use data appropriately to draw conclusions based on
evidence.
This theme is one
that most subjects in the curriculum will draw on and, by its nature, reinforces
pupils’ literacy and numeracy skills.
Developing ideas and making things
happen?
This theme is about
what users can do with information once it has been collected. They can transform,
develop or display information in various ways to understand it better and
communicate it more effectively to others. They can observe, describe and try to explain
what happens as a result of introducing certain changes in the information or its
processing. The use of ICT increases the efficiency with which data can be
processed – automated processing allows large quantities of data to be handled very
rapidly.
Modelling allows
someone to define or use a representation of a situation or process and to
observe how it works and what happens when something changes. Modelling activities
carried out with pencil and paper alone are slow. Speculative modelling is greatly
enhanced, speeded up and made more dynamic and exciting if suitable ICT is
available. For example, data collected from a science experiment can be stored in a
spreadsheet, presented graphically, and the model explored by changing the values
of the independent variables to test hypotheses.
The same principles
underpin the organisation of information as sets of instructions to exercise control
or to achieve desired physical effects. For example, using the menu shown on a TV
screen to program a video recorder, a viewer can define instructions that
are activated in the correct sequence when they are triggered.
Exchanging and sharing information?
This theme is about
the process of communication. It helps to form communities, transmits values,
experiences and traditions, and expands horizons. It plays a large part in preparing
pupils to be not only learners but also part of a wider community, with a voice and
with responsibilities for others. Pupils of all abilities, including those with special
educational needs, can gain awareness of their voice and responsibilities
through sensitive teaching, and by the support provided by good role models
throughout the school. This theme is the
one where there is likely to be the greatest diversity in pupils’ experiences and
backgrounds, based on what they have done in the primary years and at home. These
varied backgrounds play a particularly significant role in what needs to be taught
to pupils early in Key Stage 3. At the same time, you may find it difficult to
establish, without questioning a pupil extensively, what is the pupil’s own work in the
information he or she ‘shares’, and what has largely been contributed by or ‘exchanged
with’ others.
Reviewing, modifying and evaluating work
as it progresses
This aspect of ICT
cuts across and is integrated with each of the themes.
Evaluating work in
order to improve it
ICT engenders a
culture of development and improvement. Since almost everything pupils do
with ICT can be regarded as work under development, it is relatively easy to
encourage trying out different approaches to seek something better. The
incentive is there to explore different options, compare a new outcome with its predecessor,
and debate alternative strategies for solving a problem or creating a design.
Annotating and displaying successive improvements during the development stage
helps pupils to document how they have evaluated and modified their
product.
Pupils should select
and store evidence to show development in the content and quality of their
work. The evidence might be electronic or paper notes, digital images, video and
audio tape, and sequences of project files on disk, linked by a contents list. Notes
should justify why ICT was used, or particular programs or options chosen, and
how these improved the work at various stages. A bank of work in progress
allows pupils to refer quickly to previous approaches to inform their current work,
or to return to a previous project to improve it with the benefit of hindsight.
.
Recognising fitness for
purpose
Pupils also need to
understand what constitutes improvement or better fitness for purpose. For
example, a search for information on a topic may at first yield too many items of
interest. By clarifying what they are looking for, and using ICT judiciously, pupils
can home in on the most relevant items. Evaluation of the retrieved
information, and sharper criteria for focusing the search, lead to further trials and
refinement, or even to different approaches to the search. You can help pupils
to appreciate the importance of fitness-for-purpose by giving them regular
examples of how ICT is used in school and beyond. Encourage them to consider
advantages and disadvantages or particular purposes of different ways of searching,
analysing and reporting information, or of communicating with a remote audience.
They need to understand why and when tools such as spreadsheets and techniques
such as graphical representation are useful.
Recognising
inappropriate uses of ICT
As pupils gain
familiarity with a greater variety of tools and techniques, you also need to help them to
recognise when and when not to use ICT facilities to perform certain tasks. For
example, they need to appreciate the advantages and disadvantages of using
props such as wizards in their work and recognise when it would be appropriate
to design their own automated procedures. Make sure that they are aware of
uses of ICT that are feasible but inappropriate, for example:
using an electronic
calculator when a calculation should be done mentally;
generating
inappropriate graphs of data, merely because a facility exists – for example, using a
line graph to display discrete data that should have been presented in a bar
chart or pie chart;
labouring to input
one page of text and figures that could have been handwritten and
photocopied, if necessary;
using ICT for a
piece of work that is not enhanced sufficiently to be worthwhile, or for work that is
not saved electronically;
copying passages
from CD-ROM or the Internet for reproduction in an essay, without having a
strategy for selecting and summarising suitable parts;
spending more time
on minor, repetitive embellishments to a document than on content or a
consideration of audience;
logging data in an
experiment, with little consideration of the volume of data that is needed and
the effects of the rate of sampling;
using technically
complex ICT facilities to produce material for an audience that does not have access
to the facilities required – for example, the latest version of browser software.
Checking outcomes
Another aspect of
developing pupils’ ability to improve their work is to make sure that, whenever they
use electronic devices or software to represent, measure or process data, they
check regularly that:
the material they
are processing is complete;
the tool they are
using measures or manages the material exactly as intended.
You should also
teach pupils to be sensitive to errors whenever they are working with ICT, including
calculators, digital meters and scales. For example, encourage them regularly to:
check that they are
working on the right version of a document;
preview material
before printing it;
make mental checks
of the accuracy of calculations;
when adding a new
cell to the end of a spreadsheet row or column, check that its content is
included in the total of the row or column;
save or record work
after a useful result has been obtained, for example, after incorporating a good
idea or checking a numerical result;
check that digital
meters are calibrated and yield sensible readings.
Key Stage 4
Students
study the AQA Business and Communications Systems GCSE and the OCR National Level 2 in ICT. This enables students to get 1,2 or 3 GCSEs depending on their ability and interests.
