What next?
Vince Brannigan:
"The move from Unit Standards to Technology Achievement Standards can mean a legacy of the students achieving a lot in the past, and then suddenly finding that it's a lot harder to be sure they're going to be marked well when dealing with clients. We've found Year 12-13 students can get very distracted by trying to get the credits – 'don't worry about what the customer wants, as long as it works'. With Year 11 now doing client-based projects this will become less of an issue."
The unit is being repeated, with improvement, for the 2007 Year 13 class.
The Year 12s going on to Year 13 were more familiar with using clients, so were briefed on the unit before the summer holidays so they can think about and maybe even set up clients over the Christmas break.
For this class Vince formalised the process of research and developing a brief by adopting a Five Questions approach, based on the MORST future thinkin tool.
This approach works through five key questions:
- What is existing situation?
- What are the trends?
- What are the drivers of the trends?
- What are the possible futures?
- What is the preferred future or solution?
For his 2007 class, Vince has also developed a new set of database and PHP notes.
University mentors are being used again, and there will be a visit by Scott Abernethy.
Vince is keen to develop the use of CRC cards and role-playing systems in his teaching to help students understand the nature of the code they are writing.
He will also the introduce the CREST Award scheme one year earlier, in Year 12, so that students will have the opportunity to gain the award at the Gold level in Year 13.
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