Background
Katikati College in the Bay of Plenty is a decile 6 co-educational Year 7-13 school with a role of about 950 students. In Years 7-9, students follow a broad Technology programme in Materials, Food, and Information and Communication (ICT) Technology. At Year 10 students must choose a full-year option from ICT, Food, Hard and Soft Materials, or Graphics. The ICT option leads into a Year 11 ICT programme in which the full year's work is built around a web solution. At Year 12, the ICT option again sits alongside other technology options, as well as unit standards courses in Computing, Furniture Making, and Hospitality. The Technology Faculty at Katikati is headed by Malcolm Howard. Malcolm designed the course with teacher Steve Graham, who is now teaching at Tauranga Boys' College.
Steve and Malcolm participated in the Katikati College and Hillcrest High School Beacon Practice cluster, which involved an extensive campaign to improve the teaching and assessment of technology in an ICT context – see case study BP 604: Teaching Technology in an ICT Context and other related case studies. One of the first classes to benefit from this initiative was the 2006 Year 10 ICT class (see case study BP 628 A Junior ICT Programme). That 2006 Year 10 ICT class was highly motivated and the outcomes they had achieved were very satisfactory, and had enjoyed the experience so much that most had opted into the Year 11 ICT/Technology class.
