OCR National Certificate in ICT
(4 GCSE's A*-C)*

Course description:

ICT is a compulsory course for all students in Years 10 and 11. Students will be studying for the OCR National Award in ICT (Level 2). You can choose this option on top of the compulsory ICT subject.

*Students choosing this option should have very good ICT skills (Level 5-6 minimum at KS3). This course involves large amounts of independant study and the ability to work on your own time and initiative is essential.

This award is equivalent to 4 GCSEs, depending on the number of units successfully completed during the 2 year course. The theme behind the course is for it to be highly practical in nature and to allow the students to be creative as they learn. It is planned as follows:

Optional ICT units (chosen as one option choice)

Students will study 4 optional units during Years 10 and 11, in addition to the Core ICT units, allowing them to gain up to a further 2 GCSE qualifications in ICT.

Unit 4:	Design and produce multimedia products
Unit 2:	Web page creation
Unit 20:	Creating animations for the www
Unit 21:	Creating computer graphics

Course Structure:

• Students studying the compulsory ICT units will have 2 hours of ICT per week.
• Students studying the extra ICT option units will have a further 5 hours of ICT per fortnight.

Homework:

The amount of work completed by students outside prescribed lesson times will partly determine how many units they will manage to cover on the course. It is expected that students spend a minimum of 1 hour of homework each week on the core units, and a further 1 hour each week on the option units. All of the necessary material will be accessible through the school portal (https://wwww.bmsportal.net). Students will take responsibility for completing and submitting work on time, to strict deadlines. Students should be aware, therefore, that there may be occasions where they will need to do more than one hour of work at home in a given week.

Assessment and Weightings:

The optional ICT course is assessed by continous coursework tasks and comprises of the following:
Unit 4: Design and produce multimedia products (60 hours)
Unit 20: Create animations for the www (30 hours)
Unit 2: Web page creation (60 hours)
Unit 21: Creating computer graphics (30 hours)

Assessment is by means of digital e-portfolios. No printing is necessary. There are no exams.

Books, equipment, materials and resources:

A PC at home with internet access would be of great benefit to students on this course. However it is anticipated that some students will only be able to work in school, and arrangements can be made to accommodate this. Blatchington Mill uses the Microsoft Office suite and Macromedia MX suite across the network, and the course will use these as main applications. These software applications would also be very useful to the student.

Opportunities for study beyond Key Stage 4:

For those who wish to increase the number of units studied, perhaps to increase their GCSE qualifications, we offer further units of study on this course in Year 12 at Blatch 6. For those students who enjoyed the practical nature of the course, the Applied ICT AS or A2 Level allows further opportunities to extend and consolidate their skills and interests. For students who are more interested in the workings of computers themselves there is also the opportunity to study the well respected AS/A2 Level Computing course. All of these courses are available at Blatch6.

Career Opportunities:

The OCR National qualifications have been developed to provide relevant job-related skills and understanding. They provide a good grounding in a range of ICT work using business standard software applications, and allow students to develop an interest and a skill in one or more specific areas of ICT.