ICT at St. John's

St John’s has a broad range of well supported ICT resources and facilities. They include the following:-

• A well equipped ICT suite with twenty four workstations each with two screens.
• ICT suites in the Pre-Prep and Maths departments.
• Three sets of twenty four wireless laptops that can be used around the school.
• Networked interactive whiteboards and data projectors in every classroom.
• A range of audio visual resources including visualisers, still and video cameras and sound recording equipment.

The boys at St John’s use ICT in their school work across the curriculum from  Reception through to Year 8. In all subjects boys are encouraged to use  educational websites and software to enhance their learning. They record and present their classwork using word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software.

In some subject areas, such as Science, Maths, Music, and Art, ICT is used to design, model, analyze and process content. In Music, for instance, the children use Sibelius and other music software to compose their own pieces of music. In some subjects, for example Science, Geography and History pupils are required to develop their learning using the School's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) resources, which are being systematically developed.

In the Nursery the boys get one to one experience every week. In the Pre-Prep the boys have a weekly ICT lesson from Reception upwards and this carries on right through to Year 8. The teaching of ICT at St John’s is influenced by the National Curriculum programme of study and the KS3 ICT Strategy though we plan and prepare all of our own lessons.

The ICT curriculum reflects the use of IT in society as a whole. It is broad and balanced with a range of technical, business-orientated, and creative projects. We enrich the child’s experience of ICT by using a range of plug-in devices such as scanners, microphones, cameras, drawing tablets and programmable robots.

Generally speaking we cover the following:

• Key skills using office applications
• Controlling devices and events
• The construction of simple IT
• Basic programming through work in Logo, VBA in Excel, and drag and drop multimedia programming
• Exciting graphics, video and sound projects

The boys are encouraged to help each other while they are working and use their own initiative when they are trying to solve a problem. The tasks are very content driven with some cross curricular tasks and other projects dealing with believable everyday situations. Design and problem solving skills are also developed in this subject along with the use and knowledge of information technology.

ICT is often used as a tool in the workplace and the boys are expected to be as productive as possible with tasks being completed within a limited timescale. All of the boys are expected to achieve certain clearly expressed goals but some boys will take the work much further.

Mr R Finnigan
Head of ICT

Download:
Yr5 and Yr6 ICT curriculum information
Yr7 and Yr8 ICT curriculum information