Information Technology The Information Technology Department runs classes in the Senior School for all year levels from Year 7 to Year 12. In Years 7 and 8, all students undertake a rotation of approximately 12 to 13 weeks in Information and Communications Technology. The Year 7 students were introduced to Flash Creative Cloud to create their own digital graphics and animations, and they then went on to create animations and games in Scratch. The course stressed independent learning and creativity and set the students up for further studies in graphic design and game design.
ROB CLEGG
Head of Information Technology
In Year 8 ICT, the main component taught was Flash animation. The students reviewed the use of the drawing tools and the Flash workspace, as well as some basic action scripting and simple buttons. The students were then challenged to make their own animation as well as an ‘Escape the room’ game in Flash. They had to carefully work their way through a detailed tutorial to produce their game. Many students then went beyond the scope of the tutorial, creating interesting room variations and interactivity. The elective subject of Digital Design was offered to the Year 9 students. This full-year course covered the units of Graphic Design, Capturing and Manipulating Digital Still Images, Enhancing the User Experience with Adobe Flash, Digital Narratives using Adobe Flash and Digital Video: Foundations of Video Design and Production. This course built on the graphic design and animation skills learnt in Year 8 as well as introducing the students to digital-image editing and video production. The students in the Digital Design course relied heavily on the extensive course materials and lessons on the school’s Moodle site. Students, to a certain extent, could work their way through the course materials at their own pace. Work was submitted and graded electronically – a paperless course. Students in Year 10 were able to choose two IT subjects – Information and
Communications Technology and Information Technology Systems/ Robotics. The ICT course was designed to be a more general IT course to develop skills used across a range of career choices. The course covered graphic design, Flash animation and webpages. In Flash, students were able to learn some more advanced techniques and were given the opportunity to create their own Flash game. In the webpage unit, students were given ideas on how to critique webpages and then went on to design and build their own websites. The Robotics students developed their skills in design, developing and evaluating the context of writing Robot C programs to control their Lego Mindstorms NXT robots. They learnt the theory of problem-solving techniques and programming structures. The students were then able to create and program robots to perform a wide variety of tasks. In Years 11 and 12, the students were able to study the Information Technology Systems. Information Technology Systems (ITS) is a practical discipline that prepares students to respond to emerging digital technologies and information technology trends. The Year 11 students developed skills in graphic design for both electronic and print media, and learnt to work with Adobe Fireworks and in Design. In Semester Two, students worked on Flash animation and using Actionscript to develop their own Flash learning object. Year 12 ITS covered website design in Semester One and game design in Semester Two. Students learnt html code and CSS, developed an ePortfolio and created games in both Unity and Gamemaker. My thanks to the teachers in the department, Mr Bryce Goldburg and Mr Mark Lockett, particularly in how they continue to develop resources for their classes and to keep up to date with changing technologies. My thanks also to Mr Lockett for his assistance in the robotics components of the Senior courses. THE SOUTHPORT SCHOOL SOUTHPORTONIAN 2014
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