Outcomes
'Spyda Pod' concept animation
(click to view, 1.2Mb, .wmv file)
Karllie says that overall she was pleased with the end results of this unit, although a little disappointed that, while some students made great websites, their technological practice in aspects such as brief development was neglected.
In term 4 she reinforced the importance of engaging with all aspects of technological practice and was much more impressed with their brief development, which was the focus of their programming projects. However, she thinks perhaps she expected too much within the given timeframe, as she only saw the class three times a week and activities such as camp interrupted classtime that term.
In order to get students familiar with how they would be assessed at senior level, Karllie wrote some new assessment schedules to fit with the Alternative Assessment Schedules at Levels 1, 2 and 3. She felt it was important that students were assessed on the practical parts of the unit, and therefore gave marks for their practice as well as their programme, based on user-friendliness and good design.
Karllie says that the students enjoyed the practical elements of the unit, especially being able to edit their own graphics, and that those who liked the programming "really got into it". She comments that this class gave students thinking about doing programming in Year 11 the knowledge and experience they needed to make an informed decision and helped with student retention – some students, for example, decided that programming is not for them, but instead of giving up ICT altogether did the Applications course instead.
One of the biggest teaching challenges was the class size – 29 students made it harder to use the Alternative Assessment Schedules and meant she couldn't do all assessments one-on-one. However, she feels happy with how the assessment has gone given such a big class.
