Here’s a quick update on our curriculum review and redesign... as you know, we are in the process of rening and extending the units of learning to further enable our students to incorporate the use of ICT into their learning in meaningful ways. Our ICT lessons will connue to
provide a sound basis for students and class teachers to draw on and in many cases will work hand in hand with classroom studies.
In the past couple of years we have covered a lot of ground, from the introducon of the QCA framework as a consistent approach across theschool to our current posion where we are able to review the QCA content and applicablity and move even further ahead.Along with the curriculum focus we have also been working to implement a faster and more secure network, to signicantly increase thehardware and soware available, to increase our technical stang support, to design our new website, to provide a range of PD opportuniesfor sta and to implement the secondary school curriculum. We know we have achieved a lot and are really excited about the further
developments to come.
As our student capabilies develop we have to ensure our curriculum design meetstheir needs. The QCA suggests teaching Powerpoint basics in Year 6! At DBIS our
students are beyond the need for this unit at that year level. The curriculum designwill include a reassignment of units valuable to retain to challenge our younger
students as well as the introducon of new units not covered by the QCA guidelines
at all.
We now have a exible curriculum of 8 units per year instead of 6. Teachers areinvited to discuss when units can be taught in ICT so that they can reect subjectsand contexts being taught in class, making everything more connected and more
relevant.
Over the next few weeks there will be more informaon available to you about thedevelopments underway and how these will provide increasing opportunies for
you and your students.
What is the fussabout Adobe CS4?
Adobe is one of the top four soware
and technology providers in the world.
It produces industry leading soware fordesign, web creaon and digital imagery.DBIS is has purchased a site license forthe use of its latest CS4 Design Suitewhich includes Photoshop, InDesign (formagazines and leaets) Illustrator (forgraphics) and Dreamweaver (for webdesign).It also contains Adobe Acrobat Pro toallow you to create and edit PDF leseasily. There are many other excingbenets from the soware too.
The school license allows us to provide
the soware to sta so that they can
use it to prepare materials on one home
computer. Many of the sta have alreadytaken up the oer for the soware andare waing for installaon.Learning to use the soware is easy.Adobe provides clear basic tutorials that
will guide you through their products in
order to qualify for Adobe cercaon.
These can be found at
www.adobe.com/
educaon/resources/k12/instruconal/
If you would like to learn more please dropinto the Monday ICT training for support.
Most of us spend more time using Microsoft Word than anyother Office application, so make use of our handy guideto Word’s shortcut keys and cut down the time you spendhunting for what you want among the many menus andtoolbars.
Ctrl+C Copy Ctrl+V Paste Ctrl+ Z UndoCtrl+ S Save Ctrl+ P Print Ctrl+B Make selected text boldCtrl+1 Single-space all the lines in selection Ctrl+U Underline selected textCtrl+2 Double-space all the lines in selection Ctrl+M Indent paragraph or selectionCtrl+Del Delete the word to the right of the cursor F7 Run a spelling and grammar checkCtrl+Backspace Delete the word to the left of the cursor Shift+F7 Use the ThesaurusCtrl+L Align selection or paragraph to left of the screen Ctrl+I Make selected text italicCtrl+E Align selection or paragraph to the centre of the screen
Moving from PC to Mac
Now I am not sure if the picture on the le isaccurate as I love the PC but we do have a suite of 12 Macs at school. The whiteboard and projectorare even connected and nearly funconing!So what is the dierence between the two? AmI going to be able to use them? Well, the suite isavailable for bookings in the sta room and youcan always ask for help from David. Drop in onMonday or request a PD session for your year
group.
Apple have also created this rather simple videoto help you work around the dierences. It
is available at
www.apple.com/ndouthow/
mac/#tutorial=switcher
25 February ‘09Vol. 05 No. 01
ICT News!
ICT Curriculum Development
If you are working on severaldocuments at once, you can savethem all without closing Word inthe process. Just hold down Shiftand click on the File menu. You willsee a new option Save All. There isalso an option to Close All if youwant to do so without closing Word.
Word shortcut keys
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