ICT
Department
The department delivers both the ICT and the Business Studies curricula in
the school.
Staffing
The department consists of nine teaching staff and one specialist ICT Teaching
Assistant. The school’s Technical Support Team consists of our ICT
Maintenance Co-ordinator, junior ICT Technician and Web Design/Multimedia
Assistant.
Facilities
The department has seven purpose-designed ICT suites, all fully networked
with digital projectors and we also have access to a technical suite for
delivering specialist courses. As a Specialist School for Mathematics and
Computing we have the new ‘Sir Tom Cowie’ ICT suite and resource
centre to be equipped with approximately 100 networked PC’s for cross-curricular
use and out of hours learning. The school also makes regular use of one
of Sunderland’s City Learning Centres which is based at Southmoor.
In addition to our whole-school network and access to the internet the school
is linked up to the Sunderland
Schools (VLE) Virtual Learning Environment.
The ‘VLE’ is the Sunderland LEA intranet, a web-based facility
which allows pupils, teachers and ICT staff throughout the City of Sunderland
to share and access web-based resources. The folders are web-based so users
can store, exchange and access the information from anywhere in the world
including the use of e-mail facilities. Home-school working is now a reality!
Key Stage 3 Curriculum
All pupils are taught ICT in mixed ability groups for one hour per week in
KS3. The lessons follow the National
KS3 Strategy for ICT and QCA units
of work.
Year 7 pupils have an additional one hour per week for ICT which is dedicated
to enhancing their general ICT skills in keyboarding, word-processing, spreadsheets
and databases for use across the curriculum and the strategy lessons.
We are planning to deliver some areas of the KS3 curriculum in a ‘different’ way
by making use of the CLC facilities and staff expertise.
Key Stage 4 Curriculum
From Year 10 all pupils follow either GCSE
(Full Course) ICT or GNVQ
ICT (Intermediate). In addition pupils have the option of studying GCSE
Applied Business.
In Year 11 some pupils have the option of selecting an additional alternative
ICT course: these options are the European
Driving Licence (ECDL) qualification,
an ICT industry based module CISCO IT Essentials I course, or pupils may
choose to work on a community based project with one of our link schools.
Southmoor school is also a CISCO Local Academy attached to the City
of Sunderland College (Centre of Vocational Excellence) through which
the CISCO IT Essentials module is offered.
Key Stage 4 pupils can now also attend the AIDA
(Award in digital applications) course.
Extra-Curricular
Activities
The department has a dedicated ICT room for out-of-hours learning, which
is monitored by ICT staff and the Teaching Assistant. All pupils are encouraged
to use the ICT facilities out-of-hours. Staff regularly host a number of
different activities throughout the year including a daily coursework workshop
for KS4 pupils.
The school website team consists of pupils, staff and the Web Design Assistant,
whose job it is to maintain and develop the content of the school website
and resources on the VLE.
The school has previously hosted a Summer School for ICT aimed at Year 6
and Year 7 pupils and we hope to continue similar activities in the future.
Some specialist ICT activities are also being planned for out-of-hours. |
