Welcome to St. Joseph's Catholic College

Welcome

Course Outlines

Homework

Staff

ICT Resources

ICT

St. Joseph's Catholic College provides courses in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from Year 7 to Year 13. The college possesses six ICT suites and additional facilities within each family area to encourage the use of ICT across the curriculum. More information on what is taught at each Key stage can be found by clicking on Course Outlines or by contacting any member of staff in the department.

Our aim is that all students leave college with the necessary ICT skills and capabilities that are required to start them on the path to a successful future career, in whatever field they choose. To this end, they not only learn how to use ICT but also look at why it is used, the impact of ICT and also gain the awareness to decide what ICT usage is appropriate in different situations. As ICT is used in many other subject areas in college, we teach skills that can be used across the curriculum in support of students' learning.

Students will gain exposure to many areas of ICT including:

Web Design	Data Handling	Modelling	e-Safety	Desk Top Publishing
Programming	Main-mapping	Keyboard skills	Internet searching	Presenting information

Software used (depending on the key stage) will include:

Microsoft Word	Microsoft Excel	Microsoft Access	Microsoft PowerPoint	Microsoft Publisher
Flowol	Adobe Flash	Adobe Fireworks	Adobe DreamWeaver	Flexidata
KAZ Typing Tutor	Microsoft Explorer	Movie Maker	Microsoft Visual Basic	Audacity
Open Office	Crocodile ICT	2 Simple 2 Connect

ICT Homework

Homework should be completed on a computer using appropriate software. If you do not have access to the necessary computer hardware or software at home, you should complete the homework using the facilities available in the College.

Suitable, full-featured alternative software to that provided by Microsoft can be downloaded free of charge from www.openoffice.org.

Homework will be checked on the due date – it is your responsibility to bring the completed homework to College for transfer to the school system via email or USB stick.

Year 7

Term 1 - Presentations

Develop a presentation of at least five slides on your family. The presentation should show the use of a master style, hyperlinks, animation, text and graphics. In the notes section of your presentation, explain why you think the items you have included are appropriate.

Term 2 - Modelling

Develop a spreadsheet to show your income and spending over a year. The spreadsheet should include an appropriate chart, formulae, functions and formatted text. You should include a variable to show how values will change when an item such as number of chores done changes. Explain any formulae, functions or variables you have used.

Term 3 - Internet Reliability and Bias

Is Chocolate Good For You? The government are thinking about banning chocolate from the UK (!)

Use the Internet to research the benefits of eating chocolate. Write a short statement from the viewpoint of someone who loves chocolate and is against the ban. Use the information you gathered from the web to support your view; list the websites you used.
Then, use the Internet to research the disadvantages of eating lots of chocolate. Write a second statement from the viewpoint of someone who wants to ban chocolate. Use the information you gathered from the web to support your view; list the websites you used.

Term 4 - Data Handling

Before you can enter data into a database you need to set up the structure and identify the fields and data types to be used. You have been asked to set up a database to store data about students in the school:

Identify and list the fields you will use in your database. Hint: Think about the data you would like to store, e.g. name, age, year group, method of transport to school, number of commendations received, etc.
For each field choose an appropriate data type from the list below and explain your choice:

Text
Number
Yes/No
Multiple Choice (choose from a list)

Term 5 - Theme Park Leaflets

Term 6 - Control

During this unit you have been learning about how computers are used to control devices in everyday life. In this homework you will write a Structured English statement for one of the following scenarios:

Getting up in the morning

An automated entry/exit barrier in a car park

Making a cup of tea/coffee

Year 8

Term 1 - Web Design

Produce a plan for a website about a sports club or a music group. The plan should include a structure diagram showing how the pages in the site will be linked. You should also produce a draft of the home page showing colours, images and hyperlinks and their positions on the page.

Term 2 - Newsletters

Produce a 4 page A5 newsletter about an upcoming major event e.g. Olympics, World Cup, Cultural event. You should focus on adopting a consistent style throughout the newsletter which includes use of fonts, columns, colour and headers & footers. You can include content obtained from the Internet or other sources but should acknowledge the sources in the newsletter.

Term 3 - Control

The windows in the school are controlled by a computer. They open and close automatically depending on the temperature in the room. They can also be overridden by the teacher using a switch in the room.

Draw a flowchart to show how the windows in the classrooms work automatically (using temperature sensors in the room).
It’s too hot in the classroom. Draw a flowchart to show how the windows in the classrooms open manually (using the teacher-controlled switch). Remember: the manual override only works for a short time before closing again.

Term 4 - Modelling

The school chaplain is collecting Easter Eggs for 100 less fortunate people in the diocese. She would like a spreadsheet model to show her how many eggs each tutor group has collected. The sheet should also show how many eggs she can give to each person. Her target is two eggs per person. Your model should show how many eggs the school staff should collect if pupils do not collect enough for two eggs each. Use variables and Goal Seek to demonstrate different scenarios.

Term 5 - Theme Park Finance

In this unit you have been analysing the Fixed and Variable costs/incomes for your Theme Park. Answer the questions below on paper and hand-in to your ICT teacher.

List 2 Fixed costs for your theme park (i.e. costs which do not change).
List 2 Variable costs for your theme park (i.e. costs which are dependent on something else, e.g. number of burgers sold).
List 2 Fixed incomes for your theme park (i.e. income which does not change).
List 2 Variable incomes for your theme park (i.e. income which varies depending on something else, e.g. number of burgers sold).
For each of the above, justify why they are a Fixed or Variable cost/ income. E.g. "Land rent is a Fixed cost because we would have to pay for the land regardless of the number of visitors we have to our theme park."

Term 6 - Project Life Cycle

In preparation for your Diploma in Digital Applications course next year you have been learning about the Project Life Cycle.
On an A4 piece of paper (by hand or using the computer) draw the Project Life Cycle. Explain what happens at each stage in the process.

Year 9

Term 1 - Summative Project Brief comprehension

Produce a breakdown of the tasks and sub tasks involved in the Summative Project Brief. Show clearly the order in which the tasks should occur and the estimated duration of each task. The work should be presented in a spreadsheet with clearly labelled column headings, headers and footers and should fit on no more than two pages.

Term 2 - Invitation design and choosing charities

For your project, you need to identify four charities and design an invitation for a student dance. For your homework, you should choose four charities and explain why you have chosen each charity and why the charities are appropriate for the event you are organizing. For the invitation, you should design a hand-drawn invitation and then ask a family member of the appropriate age for feedback on the invitation, including any areas for improvement.

Term 3 - Sources and styles

For your set of documents that you will be producing to meet the requirements of the Summative Project Brief, you will build a sources table showing primary and secondary sources that you plan to use. For your homework, you need to produce the sources table in Word or Excel and ensure you include a range of both primary and secondary sources (Internet, books, surveys, interviews, drawings). You can use the template source table on the web site as a guide but must produce your own version with at least 10 sources.

Term 4 - Planning

During the year, you will have been keeping track of what you have completed in each lesson and also what work you have completed at home. You now need to produce an overall plan of what you have done and how long it took. Using Excel (or a similar package) you should create a Gannt style chart, showing how long you planned to take on each activity and also how long you actually took – you will need to refer back to the list of tasks you produced as part of the homework in Term 1.

Term 5 - Danceometer

In lessons, you will have produced a spreadsheet to show what music is being played at which times. Your homework is to get a family member or friend to complete the spreadsheet and then give feedback on what could be improved in the spreadsheet. You should produce a second version based on this feedback.

Term 6 - Project Review

At the end of the year, you need to look back at what you have done throughout the year and document feedback on the process. For homework, you need to produce a review of the year which looks at what went well, what went badly and what you would do differently next time. You also need to review each of the documents you have produced. More guidelines can be found on the SPB website.