8/14/2019 For Staff and Students of DBIS

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We are working through some signicant developments in the area of ICT to ensure we maintain momentum in this area, building on from the workcompleted in previous years.

This subject area will no longer be known as ICT, instead it will be called Digital Media and Communications Literacy (DMC) in keeping with our studentlearning needs and global educational developments. This may seem like a simple thing, but we believe the new curriculum name will better reect our increasing focus on the application of a range of digital media and our inclusion of these media within a range of literacies. We have moved beyond havingour students just learning and applying a range of skills to a more integrated and broad ranging set of learning processes and outcomes.

We are currently working through a review of the existing curriculum, which is based upon the QCA scheme of work. Our rened curriculum will continue todraw on the QCA guidelines but will include a wider scope of study and the inclusion of a broader range of applications and media. The rened curriculumwill accommodate a cross curricular approach and will be closely aligned to each year groups contexts of study and associated learning outcomes. Our expanding / rened curriculum will embrace new technologies and the skills and knowledge our students bring with them.

Our curriculum will work towards encompassing a set of essential concepts that include;

Digital age literacy for our students and staff.Digital age literacy encompasses the development of core literacies (reading, writing,listening and speaking), technological literacies, visual and information literacies,multicultural literacy and global awareness.

A teaching and learning culture that encompasses and encourages creative thinking

A focus on inventive / creative thinking to enhance student and staff capacity to beadaptable,

to manage complexity and to self direct their learning.

Effective communication

Effective communication is a critical life tool. Opportunities to enhance communicationskills can be presented by way of team or collaborative learning opportunities, a focus onpersonal and social responsibility and interactive communication.

Quality processes and outcomes for students and staff 

This is a critical concept in all areas of the curriculum and in life in general. To support and

encourage these quality processes and outcomes we will assist our students and staff in

prioritizing, planning and managing the effective use of digital media and communicationliteracies for enhanced student outcomes.

 

With a focus on these essential concepts we hope to further enable our students to:

- Extend their thinking and learning skills to produce creative and innovative

insights.

Develop more productive ways of working and solving problems individually

and collaboratively.

- Demonstrate their understanding of concepts, issues, relationships and

processes.

- Express themselves in relevant ways.

- Communicate locally and globally to solve problems and share knowledge.

- Understand the implications of the use of DMC and their social and ethical

responsibilities as users of DMC.

DMC will be sub divided as the diagram shows below. An element of each strand is taughtprogressively across all years.

Nov 9th 2009

Vol. 06 No. 01DMC News!N e w D i r e c t i o n f o r I C T

ICTTop

Tip

F o r s t a f f a n d s t u d e n t s o f D B I S

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

On Wednesday 11th November at

3.15, there will be a series of mini ICT

workshops in the ICT suites.

Don’t forget to make your selecon from

the choices adversed.

When you have a long Word

document containing a lot of 

dierent informaon pertaining to

the same thing, it can be dicult to

create a summary of the document.

AutoSummarize is a feature in Word

2007 that scores the document

by giving points to sentences that

contain frequently used words. You

can then use the highest scoring

sentences to create the summary or

use the Auto funcon.First we will add the AutoSummary

shortcuts to the quick access bar.

Click the Oce Buon \ Customize

\ Choose commands from \ All

Commands then scroll down and

highlight AutoSummary Tools click

the Add buon.

Now click the quick access

AutoSummarize icon.

Now that we have the AutoSummarize

dialog box open we have dierent

opons to choose from. The

Highlight key points will allow you to

go through the document and nd

most commonly used words and

phrases so you can conclude your

own summary.

Using the Execuve Summary

basically auto generates a summary

of the document and places it at the

top of the document. Creang a new

document will just take the below

summary and place it in a new Word

document.

8/14/2019 For Staff and Students of DBIS

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W h at h av e t h e Ye ar G r ou p s l e a r n t t h is t e r m ?Year 1

The year 1 classes have focused onE safety and have been followinga series of programmes thathelp them begin to understand

about being safe online. Thishas included idenfying trustedpeople and what informaon itis not safe to share online.

Although we have also talkedabout stranger danger online,it is important to note that thestudents are beginning to beaware of informaon security.

They have now started reningtheir skills with computer basedart packages. This includedusing a wider range of skills todevelop texture in the work that

they are producing and creangpieces of work in the style of famous arsts like Mondrian,Kandinsky and O’Keefe, usingDazzle and Art Rage.

Year 2

The students started the yearinvesgang search techniqueson the internet. They havepracced nding websitesusing Google and have usedan online animal databaseto skim and scan for relevant

informaon. Search techniquesthey have used included usingthe contents, site map, searchand index funcons on website.

In preparaon for Wordprocessing developmentwe are developing basickeyboarding skills using freeonline applicaons. Soonthey will return to formangdocuments, text and picturesin Word. Starng with textappearance, the students willcreate documents with photos,

graphics and text to helpdevelop the meaning of theirwork.

Year 6

In Year 6 the students beganthe year invesgang anddeveloping skills in DeskTop Publishing. Comparing3 soware programs (Word,Publisher and InDesign) thestudents designed and createdthe layouts for the front coversof their own magazines.

The next unit is InternetResearch where the studentswill be developing moreadvanced searching skills andlooking at Boolean techniques

for searching. Increasingly wewill be quesoning sources and

discussing bias on the net.

The students will be preparing

for the next IPC unit on Oil aswell as the next DMC unit wherethe class teachers have selecteda unit for them to produce ananimated documentary on howoil is formed.

In line with the current IPC topic,we are moving next onto 3Ddesign work using Photoshop.

In this unit the class will bemodeling ordinary objects andturning them into art pieces bydesigning wrap around skins.

Year 5

In preparaon for the researchin the year ahead Year 5 startedthe year with work on Internetsearching. The students usedand compared a variety of search engines and worked onquesoning the validity of theirsources. They developed searchstrategies and also referencedtheir sources of informaonand pictures aer working onplagiarism.

At the moment classes areworking on animaon. Theyhave discussed the various waysof creang animaon and used2D animaon soware on theinternet. They have worked onthe basic tools of Photoshopand developed their use of specic tools for selecon andwell as those directly relatedto animaon using. They willconnue to rene this skilland use it as a mulmediaplaorm for a PHSE project onCyberbullying in the next term.

Year 3

To help prepare the classesfor all the fantasc work theyare going to do in the IPC weinially focused on rening

skills with the internet tosearch for and nd informaonabout treasure and parcularlyHoward Carter’s exploits. Thestudents could then skim andscan for interesng informaonand pictures and copy them toa word document. Importantly,we introduced the conceptof referencing by copying thewebsite address.

We are now moving on tofurther develop the use of Word processing skills with

formang document layoutsand appearance parcularlyfocusing on columns, headersand footers, tables and charts.The students will be acvelyinvesgang many of theother formang tools in Wordand PowerPoint to developmulmedia content in theirwork.

Year 4

The Year 4 the classes also

chose to start the year with

work on Internet searching. Thestudents used and compared avariety of search engines thatsearch and present informaonin dierent ways. They learntand developed simple searchstrategies and also referencedtheir sources of informaon andpictures aer learning aboutplagiarism.

Aer the research unit, theyconnued to use their skills toinvesgate E-Safety issues –idenfying causes for concern

and then creang safety posterswith rules to keep studentssafe. Finally we watched anddiscussed PHSE documentarieson Cyberbullying.

Many people join social networkslike Facebook to reconnect with oldfriends, network, meet new people,and stay connected to their currentfriends. However, the generaon gaphas caused fricon regarding what

pictures are fair game to post on thenetwork.

What happens when incriminangphotos are scanned into a socialnetwork? Aer all your photos could beobserved by friends, family, colleagues,pupils and their parents, parcularly inDB.

Here are a few ps on how to handlethe situaon when old photos of youappear on Facebook.

Use Common Sense

The ‘granny rule; that we teach the

children is sll valid for adults. ‘If youwould not show your pictures orcomments to your granny, would youwant to share them with the rest of theworld?’

Minimize the Damage

Unfortunately, with everyone joiningsocial networks, it is likely that old,incriminang photos will be postedsomewhere. With employers andcoworkers all connected through socialnetworks, somemes the best thing todo is minimize the damage.

On Facebook, one opon is to explainaway the photo in a comment. Anotherway is to simply be up front about oldpictures that have been posted. Mostpeople understand indiscreons madeduring college, as long as that behavior

is sll not going on.

Remove It

As a last resort, a picture that has beenposted can be removed by the personwho posted it. So, if a photo is so bad

that it cannot be explained away, youmay consider asking the person whoposted it to remove it. This however, isgenerally not an acceptable request onFacebook, especially if you have madecomments on the incriminang photosof others.

Use the Privacy Sengs

Most social networks, includingFacebook, have privacy sengs. Thiswill allow a person to minimize whatinformaon is shared with otherpeople. If you post a picture of yourself on Facebook, you can determine who

sees it. However, if someone elseposts a picture of you on Facebook,you will only be able to minimize howit is distributed among the networks.While this is not a fool-proof way of prevenng people from seeing old

incriminang photos of you, it is atleast one more way to make that lesslikely.

Social networks can be great toolsto help friends keep in touch or tomeet new people. Nevertheless,in the professional world, old andnew photos can be incriminang. If there are incriminang photos of youoang around Facebook, there is achance they will be seen. However, bytaking a few precauons, it is possibleto prevent this from happening.

Minimizing the damage of Social Networking Sites