ICT is changing the lives of everyone. Through teaching ICT we equip children to participate in a rapidly changing world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. We enable them to find, explore, analyse, exchange and present information. We also focus on developing the skills necessary for children to be able to use information in a discriminating and effective way. ICT skills are a major factor in enabling children to be confident, creative and independent learners.

1. Aims and Objectives

The aims of ICT are to enable children:

• to learn about “e-safety” and apply the key points to school and home use;
• to develop ICT capability in finding, selecting and using information;
• to use ICT for effective and appropriate communication;
• to monitor and control events both real and imaginary;
• to apply hardware and software to creative and appropriate uses of information;
• to apply their ICT skills and knowledge to their learning in other areas;
• to use their ICT skills to develop their language and communication skills;
• to explore their attitudes towards ICT and its value to them and society in general.

2. Teaching and learning

As the aims of ICT are to equip children with the skills necessary to use technology to become independent learners, the teaching style that we adopt is as active and practical as possible. At times we do give children direct instruction on how to use hardware or software in ‘skills’ lessons but we often use ICT capabilities to support teaching across the curriculum.  We encourage the children to explore ways in which the use of ICT can improve their results.

3. Resources

At present, the school has an ICT suite that is fitted with 33 networked computers.  Each classroom contains an interactive whiteboard and a further networked computer.  Each class in the school has access to a set of 32 mini laptops.  The networked computers are connected to colour printers located around the school.

Along with the computers, the school has the following hardware: colour printers, digital cameras, microphones, flip-videos and log boxes.