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Information
Technology
Information Technology is taught
so that children will become familiar with, and able to use, computers
and computer software to help them communicate, investigate and solve
problems. They also learn to use other kinds of everyday electronic
equipment such as video recorders.
Information Technology is not intended to replace reading, writing and
basic maths skills such as arithmetic, but to complement it -
providing a sound basis that children can build on in secondary school,
so that they understand how computers and Information Technology are
used in industry and the workplace.
Areas of Information Technology
Exploring Information Technology
Children explore the way Information Technology - including computers
and the control technology that is found in everyday devices such as
microwave ovens and video recorders - affects their lives. They are
given the opportunity to use a range of computers and including different
keyboards and other input devices (such as mice), and computer software
such as word processors, art packages and information CD ROMs. They
discuss and explore the way computers and information technology help
them in their work and life.
Communicating and handling information
Children use various computer programs to record information and their
ideas in different ways, such as words, pictures, charts or graphs,
and sound. Examples of software they will probably use include word
processors, databases, spreadsheets, drawing and music programs. They
learn to save their work, retrieve it, improve it (using the computer)
and print it out. They learn to judge the value of information they
find using Information Technology, and analyse and organise and present
it, taking account of the audience it is intended for.
Controlling, monitoring and modelling
In this area, children learn to control electronic devices and, perhaps,
simple robots (sometimes called "turtles"). They move from inputting
direct commands to developing sequences of stored commands (the basis
of computer programming), and investigate the results by changing variables,
predicting what will happen and then testing to see if they are right.
They use computers to monitor situations in the real world (the weather,
for example), discuss and explore the results, and learn to recognise
patterns.
Back to National Curriculum
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