ICT

Background

The ICT department is responsible for delivering key Media and Information Literacy skills to all students in Years 7 to 11, and for teaching IB Computer Science at Years 12 & 13.
Generally students in Hong Kong have a very good range of software skills by the time they reach secondary schooling. Our focus is very much on encouraging and developing the appropriate use of those software skills.

Staff

The department currently consists of four full time members of staff with some teaching input from members of other departments.

Curriculum

At KS3, students work through a number of units all supported by our customised moodle based MLE called LIONeL (lionel.kgv.edu.hk). Resources are centrally developed, shared and followed by all members of the department.

We are not constrained by the requirements of the UK National Curriculum - our assessment focuses on six strands: Collecting and Evaluating Sources, Data Handling, Digital Presentation, Review and Refinement, Fitness For Purpose and Constructive Energy. All assessment at KS3 and KS4 takes place on-line using custom built assessment tools.

Work at KS3 is designed to lay the foundations for all students to work towards the Edexcel AiDA qualification at KS4. We also offer a 'fast track' option so that well motivated students can additionally tackle the Multimedia or Programming units in pursuit of the CiDA qualification.

AiDA is a challenging course for students and the standards set by the examiners are high, certainly higher than the standard expected of previous GCSE ICT courses. Despite this, our students achieve outstanding reults and the teachers within the department remain committed to the course and its aims, believing in particular there is a good match to the IB philosophy and learner profile.

At KS5, we attract limited numbers of students to ITGS and Computer Science. We also make some contributions towards the ESF diploma.

Resources

The department and school are very well resourced. We have an excellent team of technicians; ICT teachers are thus able to focus entirely on Learning and Teaching rather than aspects of network management and resource deployment.

The department has 5 dedicated rooms - all classes are housed with 1:1 connectivity. The school operates a three-year replacement programme for school PCs. New machines always go into ICT rooms first with the machines they replace cascaded into other areas of the school. Thus department hardware is almost always less than a year old. Printers are widely available though the department operates almost entirely paper free.

The department curriculum uses Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Movie maker, Scratch, Audacity, Word, Publisher, PowerPoint, Excel and Access. A wide range of other generic and subject specific software is also made available across the school network.

All teachers at KGV are given usage of a personal tablet/laptop and there is wireless coverage throughout the school buildings.

The department is well represented on the school's 'Learning Technology Group' that manages and directs whole school ICT. From September 2009, a 1:1 laptop programme has been phased in. As of the 2010/11 academic year, students at years 7, 8 and 9 will be carrying laptops to every class.

Hong Kong is technologically advanced. It is very rare for a KGV student not to have access to a computer at home, and it is likely they will enjoy broadband to their desktop/laptop at speeds of around 100Mbps.