Pre-planning
When she began to plan her 2007 Year 12 ICT Programming course, Jenny wanted to further incorporate the insights she gained while involved in the Beacon Project, by ensuring the course included creativity, innovation, and fun, around a core of skill development, good technological practice and formally recognised achievement.
The course also needed to challenge and extend the growing skills, understandings and maturity of her students and dovetail into the department's carefully planned programme of learning progression. In the previous year, the Year 11 class had researched, designed and developed an educational computer game to meet the specific learning needs of an identified young person – see case study BP629 ICT – Programming.
In planning the year, Jenny had to bear in mind that she would be delivering it in mixed classes of Year 11, 12, and 13 students. Timetabling issues and her reluctance to lose good students, meant Jenny had committed herself to accommodating students in her classrooms wherever space allowed it. "Because I had taught these students before, or I had seen their work in the junior school, I didn't want to lose them due to a timetabling problem. So I accepted them whenever the timetabler could fit then in. This provided a new challenge!"
The Year 11 students were guided through the year, limited to one programming language but free to choose other software they wished to use.
In her Year 12 course, students were asked to develop an interactive multimedia CD-ROM to inform their peers about a real-life issue of their choice. They were free to combine a range of software (graphics, animation, action script, video, audio, programming code, etc), to create a professional solution.
In her Year 13 class, students worked independently with a client. They were required to identify and learn to use the software appropriate to the needs of their client issue, and, as in a real-life working situation, completely manage their own project development.
"So between Year 11 and Year 13, I go from helping them each step of the way through to throwing them in the deep end at Year 13 to prepare them for the real world."
