This week I received the green light from our Headteacher to ‘formerly share” our netbook project with staff, students and parents. On Monday, our Headteacher will confirm our intentions at the staff briefing, on Wednesday the ICT staff we will introduction the project with ‘the Laptops are Coming’ presentation during the Year 9 ICT lesson and both a letter and text will be sent home invited parents to a school forum on June 4th.
While we are working in the present we still have one eye on the future. We continues to address the different circumstance in which students use and have access to ICT. One area of interest in mobile broadband and figures from the Digital Media Index seem to indicate that the users, in the not to distant future, will expect a mobile internet connection.
- Phenomenal surge in mobile data – dongle data usage increasing by 4,125% in twelve months
- Dongle subscriptions surged by over 504%
- Mobile handset data usage increases by 108%
This is firmly in our sights at Hamble College, the costings to be investigated. The informaton landscape is changing, how we connect is evolving, fantastically presented by in this graphic from www.baekdal.com.
The world information is also going to be available almost everywhere. The concept of having to get the paper, sit in front of your TV, or look at your computer, will be long gone. Information will not be something you have to get. It comes to you, wherever you are, in whatever situation you happen to be in.
The question is not how as educators are we to adapt but perhaps how soon. Our developments at Hamble College have focused on more open news reporting and the use of RSS feeds, leaving messenging open on Moodle and the introduction of more active learning opportunities in Key Stage 3 and 4. Key Stage 3 now includes programming opportunities, video and audio editing. In Key Stage 4 the includions of a additional ICT option block, covering imedia units from the OCR National in ICT.
Assessment coversheet – Unit 03 – Digital imaging – Plan and produce computer graphics
Assessment coversheet – Unit 05 – Desktop publishing
and potentiallyAssessment coversheet – Unit 22 – Creating sound using ICT andAssessment coversheet – Unit 23 – Creating video
orAssessment coversheet – Unit 18 – Application of computer control through Scratch or Alice.
Extra curricular provision continues to be an area of interest, the DMGC (Digital Media and Gaming Club) is now maturing and the Digital Leaders group has two conferences to cover live. We now offer work experience opportunities for our students in Year 10 and we hope to extend these through term time. With the new VLE and netbook project, we are making sound progress.