ICT

NATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE SCHOOL CHALLENGE

The 2018 National Computer Science School Challenge starts on Monday 30 July. Hosted by Grok Learning, this challenge is aimed at students of all ages and abilities. This year there will be four levels - Newbies, Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced. McKinnon has enjoyed great success with these challenges in the past. If you are interested in taking part, contact Mrs Munro before Friday 27 July.

YEAR 7 ICT

All Year 7 ICT classes have started on the Research Topic which culminates in the students creating a website on their chosen Asian country. This topic ties in with Asia week which runs from 17-21 September. Students have been learning about good and bad research and how to critically evaluate websites. Not everything that appears on the internet is true!

The students discovered that the site advocating the banning of Dihydrogen Monoxide due to the fact that it sickens over 4 billion people and kills a further 2 million was in actual fact talking about water.

From a teacher’s perspective, it was interesting to see just how many students were happy to give interesting facts and figures on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus only to be told that the entire site is a hoax. Students also learned about Google’s Advanced Search and how this can be used to narrow down search results giving them the most relevant information. Hopefully by the end of this topic, students will be much better at searching for information when researching any school projects.

Shirley Munro

ICT Teacher