I recently rang my local advisory unit and was told that many of the staff had lost their previous job titles and were now all counted as part of the 'Technology team'. Despite the change of name they were all doing what they had done before but were now classified as being in a different department!
In many ways this reflected what happened in schools pre-Dearing, when technology threatened the existence of many smaller subjects. In a lot of secondary schools they faced a stark choice: merge with technology or disappear.
Post-Dearing the world is a little different; space has been allowed for non-National Curriculum subjects, and home economics can be partially seen as a separate area, however the ground covered by technology is still immense.
The draft orders divide it up into three main areas for each key stage:
Additionally, students should be given the opportunity to develop their IT capability across the subject where and when appropriate. One way is to make use of the commonest software like wordprocessors/desktop publishers, spreadsheets and databases.
Wordprocessors and desktop publishers can be used to present instructions for making items, labelling finished products, using equipment or advising on safety. Invitations, menus and place names can give a professional touch to the lunch in the home economics department and food-labelling can be equally effective for the product that is taken home.
The great advantage of starting out using a wordprocessor is that you can begin by simply using it like a typewriter and build as your confidence grows.
Manufacturers supply data sheets for their products. Presenting similar information, on a wordprocessor or DTP, about the material used in a product encourages the student to analyse and review her/his design. The computer screen offers a very easily-cleaned space where students can make attractive designs from their initials using the wide choice of fonts, styles and sizes for their designs. Such designs can be applied to cake decoration, textiles, wood, plastics or metal products.
Spreadsheets are important in industry as a tool for costing products and should be an essential part of the CDT curriculum. Start with a very simple problem of adding up the cost of the materials or ingredients in your product. For this you will need to use only two columns and a few rows. This is sufficient for students to understand what a spreadsheet is before you move on to specialised programs that are based on this concept. A spreadsheet allows the student to see the effect of any change that they make.
There seem to be four main ways that IT can be of benefit to staff and students of technology regardless of age or platform.
As a design tool: Technologists can use IT in a variety of forms as a design tool. Firstly through the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) where students design an image on-screen. There are a wide range of these packages - several for each platform and these are often supplied already installed on new machines. Programs include Draw for Acorn machines, Intellidraw for Apples and Corel Draw and Professional Draw for PCs.
The software allows students to experiment with different designs and often lets them rotate and duplicate their images on screen giving a wide variety of geometric and stretched shapes. I have seen successful results from students aged 6 to 16 with all these programs.
Most of the images produced with these programs tend to be 2-D but a clever piece of software called Touch 3D (Apple, TAG Developments) enables you to reconstruct the designs as nets. These can then be printed out to make models of the students' work.
Many other programs allow the user to print out nets from pre-defined shapes. One of the best and most versatile is My World 2+2 (SEMERC, Acorn and soon PC). Not only does this allow the user to create their own CAD nets, but also enables them to make models of dinosaurs and greetings cards. The software is very simple to use and pictures can be created fuzzyfelt-fashion by dropping selections from the on-screen bank into their place. The program can also be run content-free to allow for greater creation and manipulation.
As a planning tool: Following on from the My World discs, IT can also be used as a way to help students plan their thinking. There are various programs that can do this - ranging from the planning of a whole town, down to the interior of a room. Students can then decide which is the most effective design according to their own criteria. Software to look out for in this area include Room Planner (part of the My World set), Designing Kitchens (British Gas, all platforms), Three Dee World Builder (PC, Polyhedron) and Expert Home Designer (Apple, TAG). The majority of this type of software allows the user to look at their design from any angle or distance.
As a costing device: To help establish which design is the best students may need to know the cost of materials. This can be done either through a program such as the Primary CourseWare (RM), where students have both a budget and realistic prices to complete a certain task. Otherwise students could set up a database of a variety of materials, costs and properties which could then be interrogated to find the best material to use. The Information Workshop (RM) is easy to use, has three levels of sophistication and can store both pictures of the materials and a small amount of sound about each one.
Two programs that combine model-building, information and game-playing are the Motor stars CD (PC, Revell). This allows the user to both see a 3-D car image on screen and then print it out to glue it together. The other is The Greatest Paper Aeroplanes (PC, Kittyhawk). This combines ease of use, with clear instructions video clips of how to make wide variety of planes. It also specifies the correct material and the difficulty of its completion.
As a control tool: By using the computer as a control tool, students are improving their design capability and selecting processes to complete tasks. One of the easiest to use is First Logo (Longman Logotron, Acorn) and WinLOGO (Acorn and PC). These are specifically designed for young students or beginners in the art of control although it can be used by anyone. By controlling the turtle, students get experience of problem-solving and can move onto other more advanced programs.
In addition to these areas, students could also present their results using a multimedia program to incorporate text, pictures, photographs and video. By using a program like the award-winning Hyperstudio (TAG, Apple and Acorn/PC soon), students can create a modern electronic record of their progress rather than relying on pen and paper.
For the CDT teacher, the first thing to do is to survey the equipment that they already use in their department(s). Look for the similarities between all the available programmable equipment, such as sewing machines, knitting machines, lathes etc. Think of the similarities between these, their input devices and computers and then aim to build the pupil's understanding of information technology on simple transferable concepts. Typically the CDT teacher is offering access to IT in a room along with a number of other technologies.
There is a very wide choice of such software for calculating the nutritional value of the food we eat and comparing it with the recommended daily averages (RDA) of food. The records of these foods are held on what is a database but the distinction between databases which allow for calculations to take place and a spreadsheet is becoming increasingly blurred.
Many teachers like the Foods We Eat (Dabs, Acorn, BBC, PC) program as it is a companion to Bender's Food Tables and Food Labelling. Students are able to use both written and computerised methods of data handling and make comparisons. This also allows the time available on the computer to be allocated more effectively. This program lists 470 foods with their nutritional values. The foods can be measured in imperial or metric units and the energy calculated in calories or Joules. The totals can be compared with RDA for various population groups.
Nutrients (Hampshire MicroTechnology Centre, Acorn) is a useful program for calculating nutritional content of the student's food product in the conventional form. There are also the options of adding the food label and a bar code. Students can learn something about gaining the best nutritional value for money when doing the week's shop by using the program, Food For The Family (SCET, BBC with overlay keyboard).
There are also a number of databases suitable for menu planning. The Talking Fish resource pack supplied by the fishing industry (PC) includes a computer database giving information on species, availability, nutrition and cooking methods of fish. Also worth looking at are products from WorldAware (all platforms) and British Meat Education Service (Fast Food Diner, Acorn), Capedia (MacDiet, Apple), the Advisory Unit (Fads, Acorn, BBC, PC) and MewSoft (Diet Manager, Acorn)
Weaving and knitting are two technologies where simple computer designs can be easily applied. Weave Tutor (Emerich (Berlon), Acorn, BBC) is an introduction for key stages 2 and 3, but the program can be entered at the most basic level by any young child who has succeeded with simple hand-weaving. It would probably be a very effective program to begin with in the primary school and gradually build knowledge of more complex patterns which can be woven by hand. A printout of the loom plans can be obtained. These tutors lead to a series of three production versions of Weave which are used when the computer is linked to the shaft loom. The handbook that accompanies this program is simple to follow.
K2/P4 Knit Design Program (also Emerich (Berlon), BBC) is a simple and inexpensive program for younger children. There are numerous knitting programs which are demonstrated at the many large needlework exhibitions and at some knitting machine shops. The Pfaff Creative 7550 and the Poem sewing machines can be linked to all three computer systems. Arc Embroidery (Techsoft) for the Poem uses the parameters of stitch length, density, fill direction and fill pattern. Poetry and the software for the Pfaff are particularly good for teaching the manipulation of Bezier curves, the method needed to draw smooth curves on the computer screen. The software packages call the curve a thread and the anchor points a stitch, but this provides a very good analogy for anyone whether or not they are creating their designs for textiles.
Contributors Margaret Beith and Jon Eales