Information & Communication Technology
The ICT department offers a dedicated team of ICT specialist teachers that is enthusiastic and determined to provide pupils with the best education. The majority of the ICT staff have previously worked in industry bringing a wide range of business and enterprise skills into the classroom. There are 5 fully equipped suites with industry standard software including Office 2007 and the Adobe/Macromedia Suite. We offer all pupils the opportunity to study at least three GCSE equivalent qualifications starting in Year 9. We support all students, regardless of ability level, throughout the course by offering extra-curricular time in ICT support clubs. Pupils work independently but are provided with many opportunities to work with others to develop the sought after business and enterprise skills such as team work and communication.
As part of our Business & Enterprise specialism and our drive to be one of the best schools in the country for ICT access and provision, Aylestone Business & Enterprise College has invested heavily in a cutting edge ICT project. By flooding the school with over 80 wireless access points we have created a cutting edge ‘wireless cloud’ over the school. The cloud provides our staff and students with fast, reliable, on demand access to our network. The wireless network runs on a relatively new wireless standard. We believe we are one of a handful of schools in the country who have adopted this across a whole site. The standard allows users to connect to the network at speeds over five times faster than traditional wireless networks.
We have continued the phased implementation of over 300 laptops into classrooms for student use. These laptops complement our existing desktop provision of over 200 machines. All our machines have the latest versions of Microsoft Office. Students now have ready access to ICT provision in a classroom situation rather than having to be relocated to a computer suite, creating on demand access to ICT resources. Teaching staff have also been equipped with tablet laptops, which can connect wirelessly with the projectors in classrooms. This allows the teacher and students to interact in a totally different way in the classroom, making lessons far more interactive.
ICT will really be enhancing the teaching and learning experience at Aylestone, making us one of the leading schools in the country for ICT provision.