ICT

News and Events

OHS Pupils Win Awards in the BCS (Oxon) Schools Web Competition

On 20th June 2007 three teams of OHS girls received prizes in the prestigious British Computer Society (Oxfordshire) Schools Web Competition at an awards ceremony hosted by Cranfield University, Shrivenham.  Congratulations to Jess Creak, Katy Long and Margaret Ann Seger who were Highly Commended in the Senior Teams category for their site called Campaign for Change linked to their J8 project.  Rebekah Down and Hannah Shaw were also Highly Commended for their site offering Homework Tips to Year 8 pupils and Chloe Brown, with her RightClick website offering advice for girls considering careers in ICT, received the prize for runner up in the individual entry category.  Each girl received a selection of software and a certificate to mark her achievement.  Chloe also won an MP3 player.  Through the girls’ efforts, the school also received a book about the Internet for the School Library and a copy of the Web Design package Microsoft FrontPage.  Links to all three sites can be found at www.oxon.bcs.org/2007results.htm.

Awards for GCSE ICT Results

Out of nearly over 30,000 girls sitting GCSE ICT in England last summer, Oxford High School managed to get 3 candidates in the top 10!

Although they narrowly missed out on a top 10 place, two other girls also managed to achieve full marks in the examination last summer. They are Laura Adams and Jima Bashir.

Our three girls in the top 10 attended the Axios A Star Awards ceremony in Birmingham on Friday 6th October 2006, sponsored by IBM, Accenture and Microsoft where they received certificates and cheques to mark their achievements.

Rebecca Treloar and Anna Suswillo received cheques for £50 each and Chloe Brown – placed as runner up out of all girls entering GCSE ICT in England last summer – received a cheque for £75 and will go forward to the National Final in London at the end of November.

       

Axios Winner

Many congratulations to Chloe Brown in year 12 who has won first prize in a competetion to find the best female ICT student at GCSE level in the UK. From an original entry of 50,000 candidates, Chloe was shortlisted in November and asked to create a web site to encourage girls into a career in IT. Her site was judged the best and she was named Axios A Star Overall GCSE UK Winner at an awards ceremony in the British Museum in London last Friday. Her prize is a cheque for £200, a laptop computer and a trip to the IBM Research Headquarters in Zurich.

You can view Chloe's winning website at:
www.gdst.net/oxfordhigh/rightclick/index.html

The Department

The world is increasingly dominated by the use of Information and Communications Technology. Many aspects of our daily lives rely on ICT on a practical level. Our aim in the ICT department is to give pupils the skills and confidence to use ICT as widely as possible in their daily lives and especially to support their work in other subjects at school. Pupils also develop their problem solving abilities by learning how to apply their knowledge and understanding when developing ICT solutions to problems. Courses also enable students to develop an awareness of the wider uses of ICT at work and in the home and to consider the implications of this for society.

Facilities and Resources

The computer network infrastructure extends to every corner of the school and manages over 150 computers running the Microsoft Office 2003 professional suite of programs including Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, and Access as well as many subject related software packages. Safe filtered Internet access is available across the OHS network and pupils are encouraged to use this facility whenever they need it for school related work. Girls in years 10 to 13 have their own individual e-mail accounts in school. Other resources include, colour laser printers, image scanners, digital cameras, bar code readers, plotters

There are two main ICT rooms. The smaller one houses 20 PCs and is mainly used for ICT lessons. The larger one houses 28 PCs and is in constant use by other departments for class lessons requiring ICT facilities and for private study work during break, lunchtimes, before and after school. The other ICT room but may also be booked. This provision ensures that all girls work on their own machine and have regular access to the ICT equipment. Additionally there are networked computers in most classrooms and two further suites of computers in the Library and Science areas. The ICT resources are constantly in use at all times of the day.

Curriculum

Year 7

The year 7 course aims to give girls a good grounding in ICT skills using the major applications software packages (word-processing, presentation graphics and spreadsheets) as well as learning to carry out advanced Internet searches efficiently and safely. The course concentrates on helping girls to master the main features of each program to support their work in other subjects as well as encouraging good working habits and an awareness of health and safety when using ICT resources. Project work enables each girl independently and individually to challenge herself and extend her own knowledge and expertise according to her previous experience at Junior school. IT Extra club runs to help pupils with limited previous experience to catch up.

Year 8

The year 8 course builds on the skills learnt in Year 7. They learn how to set up and interrogate databases using MS Access and creating a user friendly interface through the use of forms. They also set up a database about a topic of their own choosing (eg their collection of books or DVDs) which they can enter for a competition for the most workable and useful database.

In the Spring term, girls extend their understanding of spreadsheets and learn to use more advanced features such as VLOOKUP and IF functions, drop down lists, spinners and named cells for linking sheets. Finally they apply these skills and techniques in a real business setting. In their “Breakeven project” they investigate the cost of running a Pizza making business using 3 linked sheets for cost, income and profit together with a graph to illustrate trends.

The course also teaches pupils about hardware (especially how to understand technical specifications when buying a computer) and control systems

Year 9

In Year 9 pupils get a taste of GCSE style project work and learn how ICT helps in hotel management at the same time.

In the Autumn term they learn to use MS Access as a relational database with linked tables, forms with linked sub-forms, queries and reports with calculated fields – challenging tasks for 13 year olds and something many schools do not tackle before A Level! As usual this year our girls rose to the challenge magnificently – and all in one 40 minute lesson per week.

In the Spring term, having reviewed their spreadsheet and presentation skills, they put all this knowledge to work in their Hotel Projects. In groups of three they set up a hotel business with a Bookings Manager, a Financial Manager and an Advertising and Events Manager.

Each member of the team produces evidence of how their part of the system works. When the projects have been submitted and judged, the top ones are presented to the rest of the group.

Years 10-11

This GCSE course (OCR syllabus A) aims to provide students with the analytical, communication and technical skills they require to be active participants in an exciting and dynamic world. The course covers computer systems and networks, communications and computer technology, ICT applications and information management. Coursework comprises 60% of the course and students are assessed in their practical skills and understanding relating to the use of 1CT applications as well as their problem solving abilities using ICT.

GCSE Candidates have been very successful in recent years. Every one of the 2003 candidates and nearly all of the 2004 candidates achieved an A* grade. (some A* candidates are seen below with their certificates). For the past 3 years there has been no grade lower than an A in GCSE ICT.

Years 12 – 13

At AS level we encourage candidates to develop an understanding of the use of ICT in processing data in a variety of organizations and situations, of the range of hardware and software tools that may be used to create an effective ICT system and of the effects of the use of ICT on the data processing and communications systems within and between organisations and individuals. They will also develop the skills necessary to tailor applications software to meet the needs of given situations and users.

A2 level

Here students learn how networked systems communicate and about the role and implications of communication systems applications of ICT. They also study the nature and management of information and office systems, embedded systems and safety critical systems. For their coursework they need to provide an ICT solution to a problem for a “real” user. This requires them to define, investigate and analyse the problem and then to design, develop, test, implement, document and evaluate their solution.