On Thursday 11th March, 60 of our Year 8 students will be joining up with Gateshead City Learning Centre to make the news. Pupils are taking part in BBC News School Report, a BBC project to engage 11-14-year-olds in the news.

Over the past few months the students in Year 8 have been working hard, training to be top journalists and on Thursday, they will be broadcasting their news, covering the stories of the day and interviewing special guests. They will broadcast a special report on education in the future live at 1pm. You can log on to Gateshead CLC BBC School Report for information about the live web broadcast and view their work as it is published.

The BBC will be tracking their progress in order to prepare a report for the national news bulletin at 6pm so make sure you’re watching!

By the 12 June 2009, all 266 students in Year 9 will have sat their practical exam for their GCSE Functional Skills:ICT. If they achieve sufficient marks in this and their other theory paper, a lot of students will be starting Year 10 with half a GCSE in the bag. Good luck everyone!

Please bring them into school. Vouchers can be handed in at Reception.

Check with friends and family to see if they have any vouchers lurking at the bottom of bags or purses!

We've bought new digital cameras this year and are looking to supply them all with rechargeable batteries.

Following the interviews on Tuesday 22 April, we would like to welcome Mr Rumney to the ICT department.

He is currently teaching at Belmont School in Durham and will replace Mr Hardie who is moving onto pastures new across the river. Like Mr Hardie, Mr Rumney spent a number of years, prior to teacher training, working in industry and students will benefit from this experience and his links.

Our colleague Mrs Turton is off to Badajoz over the holiday period to discover how ICT is used in schools in this part of Spain. There should be interesting things to report. She's going to keep us informed about her experiences in a special travelblog at www.ictgateshead.org/tipd

2008 is proving to be an eventful year for ICT at Whickham!

We will be very sad to see Mr Hardie (not RE Mr Hardy) leave at the end of May. His new appointment as second in department at Longbenton Community College sees him in charge of the new Specialised Diploma for ICT. He will be missed by staff and students alike and we wish him every success in the future.

There are also a number of curriculum changes planned for this year and you can find out more by downloading the following document.

Download ICT @ Whickham School document (PDF: 17KB)

All Year 12 BTEC ICT students have spent a day at Gateshead CLC learning the basics of Dreamweaver (an industry standard webdesign software package).

Part of their task for the Unit 15 (Organisational Systems Security) assessment puts them into the role of a junior technician within an small IT support company that provides software and hardware support to a number of small and medium sized businesses. The user support manager has asked them to prepare some web pages to go on the help section of the company website providing help and guidance on security issues.

Enter Peter Bolger and Chris Hewitson from Gateshead CLC....

Does Mr Cummings, the school groundsman, have to come into school at weekends to water the flowers in the school greenhouse?

This seemingly simple question in Mrs Turton’s ICT classroom led to some fascinating reflections on technology, work and flowers. Mr Cummings does not have to interrupt his weekends as temperature and humidity levels in the school greenhouse are digitally controlled, to the extent that sprinklers are programmed to water the flowers when conditions are particularly hot and dry.

This school-based exploration of ICT monitoring and control systems genuinely engaged the students. They became so caught up in the plight of the flowers and the flower-friendly computers that they have started their own sunflower growing competition. Whilst we can’t as yet offer flower-cam, we will provide regular updates on the growth of these flowers to see who has selected a sunflower hotspot.