Computing
Computing & Computer Science
Head of Department: Ms J Ellaway
At Gumley House we aim to impart students with the skills and enthusiasm to learn about new technologies. We want them to appreciate the fast-evolving nature of tech and how life is now about adapting and constantly up-skilling. We want to educate students about the History of tech and the people involved. We want them to appreciate that they may want to be creators of tech themselves.
A high-quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world.
The core of computing is computer science, in which pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work, and how to put this knowledge to use through programming.
Computing also ensures that pupils become digitally literate – able to use, and express themselves and develop their ideas through, information and communication technology – at a level suitable for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world.
Computing at Key Stage 3 contributes towards the Design and Technology skills, alongside Art & Design, Food Technology and Fashion & Textiles (mapped here).
CURRICULUM DOCUMENTS (ENGLISH)
|
We will start out (Year 7) by introducing the Computational Thinking approach to problem solving and give them a grounding in the understanding of computer systems and how they are used in automation and controlling systems. We also want all our students to be confident and safe users of technology at school, in their homes and on their phones. They will develop their use of Blockly style coding to remind them what fun they can have learning to code well. We will then develop this (Year 8) to include how we use specially designed languages to develop programs to get computers to do work for us/solve our problems. The notion of machine code will be mentioned here with a view to later development. |
Students will have the opportunity to produce Python coded solutions to a series of challenges that will build on each other to cover the use of programming constructs, sequence, selection and iteration and the use of variables. Data types will also be taught. Emphasis will be on the huge human endeavour over time since the 1940’s to design all aspects of computer science; how computers are built by electronic engineering and how they are put to work by software engineering and that they really cannot figure anything out for themselves.
Then in preparation for KS4 (Year 10) students will follow a course of study introducing how all data and instructions are represented as binary code (machine code). They will learn about character sets and their codes. Programming challenges will be incorporated to consolidate this and will develop into how ciphers and be used for encryption. This is intended to spark interest and enthusiasm about how this technology works and how we can use our programming skills to show encoding in action. Students always love a cipher and so the course continues as far as possible with various challenges and an introduction to Cybersecurity.
Aims and Objectives
Our aim is to ensure that all our students:
- To allow students to gain IT skills that are desirable in industry and increase their chances of employment.
- To give students the required skills to enable them to access Further Education
- Can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
- Can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
- Can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
- Are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of Information and Communication Technology
- Can appreciate the importance of legal and ethical issue when using digital device/media
Where can Computer Science take me?
Computer Science is a very important subject, it provides access to a lot of university courses, apprenticeships and prepares students for the working world. After studying Computer Science you can become a computer programmer, network administrator, database manager, graphic designer, software engineer, teacher, professor or creator.