[Jeremy Scott]

19/09/2011 at 3:17 pm

I’m keen to hear from colleagues about how much time they get in S1-3 (or S1-2 if appropriate) and what the arrangements are. For example:

– Do you have a discrete course, or is it a common course shared with another department?
– How much time do you get per week/over the year and how many hours of that would you envisage teaching programming?
– Is it always a Computing teacher that delivers the course?

Obviously, any exemplification materials that are produced will have to be deliverable within constraints above, so I need as many responses as possible. If you know what the situation is in other schools/authorities, that would be really helpful too.

Many thanks,
Jeremy

[cunniman]

19/09/2011 at 3:44 pm

Hi Jeremy, at Forrester we offer:

S1 CfE ICT course delivered between Computing & Business Ed (common course taught by the staff of both departments). We have 1 period (1 hour) per week where we dip briefly into topics like e-safety, animation, Glow, blogging, presentations, photo & video editing, game design, web design and spreadsheets.

Pupils make choices at the end of S1, and we offer a discrete CfE Computing course across S2-3, timetabled 3 ppw. This course is delivered by the Computing dept. At a guess I’d say we will probably cover maybe 20 weeks (60 hours) of programming whether with Scratch, mobile dev or VB although I’ll be able to give you a clearer answer this time next year as much of this is scheduled for S3.

Hope that’s of some use.

Mark

[DCullen]

19/09/2011 at 7:11 pm

Hi Jeremy,

Our situation in Oban High is a little similar to Marks. We do a CfE ICT course across S1 and S2, 1 period a week both years, taught by both Computing and Business Ed teachers. We do word processing, animation, presentations, internet research, spreadsheets, audacity, web design, scratch (6 hours), wikis and cover some business outcomes.

S3 is in the process of being developed. I believe we’ll be teaching it 3 periods a week. We haven’t nailed down exactly what we’ll be doing programming wise in S3. Thoughts include more scratch/BYOB, javascript, small basic, some kind of mobile dev etc. I would definetly be interested in frinding out what other schools are planning to teach in terms of programming in S3.

I also believe the school is looking to give the pupils choice in S2 and in the future the S2 course will become a discrete computing course.

[Jeremy Scott]

19/09/2011 at 10:13 pm

How long is a period at Oban?

[DCullen]

19/09/2011 at 10:22 pm

as of today they are all 50 minutes. We used to have some periods of 55 minutes but time has been taken for extended tutor time to do things like learning to learn and recognising and recording achievement.

[Darren Brown]

20/09/2011 at 6:01 am

Hi Jeremy,

We get no classes of Computing or ICT S1/2 in Inverness High School due to staff cuts – this is a running theme for Computing in Highland. We had built a full CfE course and have been asking about all pupils supposed to be covering 3rd level outcomes?????

Computing will be an option in S3, 4 periods a week, probably be 2 doubles of 50 mins a period. Need to cover 3rd level outcomes first and some 4th to hopefully be ready for most pupils to do N5 in S4.

[ianking]

20/09/2011 at 7:18 am

In Kelso We have a discrete Computing course 1 55 min period per week in S1, S2 and so far the plan is in S3. We also offer 2 single periods a week Computing option in S2 (games design and video editing)

[edsinc]

20/09/2011 at 7:49 am

Our situation in Stromness Academy is that S1 see Computing for about 16 periods (Aug-Dec) and S2 see Business Studies for about 16 periods (Aug-Dec). A period is 50min on average . They only have time to “dip” into graphics, animation, some systems, animation including sound, little Scratch and html. Next years S3 is an unknown at the moment as some curricular design has to be done and the present SG course comes to an end.

[Peter W Donaldson]

20/09/2011 at 8:32 am

In Crieff High School the Computing department has S1 for 1 and a half periods a week (the other period is on a 6 week rota with Home Economics) which is around 1 hour and 35 minutes.

At the end of S1 we have a full course choice and the pupils who have picked Computing get 3 periods a week over two years in S2/3 which equates to around 2 hours and 25 minutes.

One of the units in S1, Animation Programming, lasts for about 11 hours and in S2/3 we plan to have four units that involve some programming. The units are Basic Games Programming in Scratch, part of the Intelligent Systems unit which will involve programming Lego Mindstorms robots, Advanced Games and Simulations in BYOB and Developing Software in Small Basic. I reckon that it will equate to around 90-110 hours of programming.

We don’t have an ICT course in Crieff High School as all of the classes S1-3 are Computing focused. This means that it’s always a Computing teacher that teaches the class.

[Jennifer Chumley]

20/09/2011 at 8:37 am

In Linlithgow, we have a discrete S1 Computing course, 1 x 50 min period, however we only see S1 for 2 x 10 week blocks as we share our time with Business. In S2 and S3 we see them for 2 x 50 min periods. Programming isn’t taught until S2.

[Tait8]

20/09/2011 at 7:25 pm

In St John’s Academy we have 2 periods in S1 (either 50mins or 55mins) and 1 in S2. These are seperate from Business Studies, so we are fortunate in the sense that it is not a shared ICT curriculum. However, we are a joint faculty but we make sure we aren’t overlapping any particular topic.

S3 is unknown at this moment and time.

[cjrobertson]

20/11/2011 at 8:37 pm

In Rothesay we have S1 for 3 x 55 min periods for 13 weeks.  We cover presentation, text manipulation, animation, audacity and an enterprise topic.  S2 get 2 x 55 min periods per week of a combined Computing/Graph Comm course.  We cover video editing, programming with scratch, games design with Kodu, DTP, Autodesk Inventor, Graphic manipulation, web design and some spreadsheet and database.  It’s a bit cobbled together at the moment. We’ve been told pupils will get to choose subjects at the end of S2 but we’ve not seen what the options will look like yet so I’m a bit worried about national 4.