Pre-planning
The 2006 Year 10 ICT course didn't come out of nowhere, Steve says, but is the result of several years of evolutionary progress. "It hasn't been a case of wiping the slate clean and starting with a new course this year. We've been developing these units for the last three or four years. So what we've got now is the 2006 version."
The 2006 Year 10 ICT option was structured into four one-term modules. Each unit of work had a clearly defined set of learning outcomes. The focus of each unit was on: developing progression in one of the three components of technological practice; developing progression in the ICT domain knowledge and skills needed for Year 11; and developing a broad literacy of ICT issues.
The overall aim of the course was to equip students with a combination of ICT and Technological Practice skills and knowledge that would allow them to move into the achievement standards-based senior programmes with confidence.
"We wanted the students to have enjoyed their year and to come out enthusiastic and well prepared for our senior ICT courses. The enjoyment factor was critical in the way we designed the course - all the skills in the world are no use to us, if the students aren't opting in to senior courses."
Using their established units as a foundation and a framework, Steve and Malcolm set about refining them into something that offered progression and would serve as a base for the senior level in ICT and technological practice skills/ knowledge and allow for some experimentation with the two new strands of the technology curriculum - Technological Knowledge and The Nature of Technology.
"Just as we teach blocks of skills, so we teach blocks of technological practice based on the Components of Practice."
Another focus of the course was the development of creativity. Under the auspices of a Beacon Practice project, Steve and Malcolm worked with Beacon Practice Professional Support Facilitator Hugh Derham to create opportunities for students to be creative in their technological practice. One strategy worked into the course design was to encourage the greater use of visual diaries. Another put teenage narcissism into harness by giving the course a teenage focus and having students aim all their products at people their own age.
