OCR Nationals in ICT

The OCR Nationals in ICT share some things with the old GNVQ and some things with EDEXCELs DiDA. Like the GNVQ it is criteria based. If the syllabus asks for five different sorts of hyperlinks and the student has them then they have the mark for it. There are also qualities it shares with DiDA, modules in Graphics, Multimedia, Sound, Video and DTP and the need to get feedback and take account of users characteristics are familiar from DiDA. Although DiDA took market share quickly after the end of the GNVQ, it has been dogged by controversy about its variable marking This has seen an exodus of early adopters, especially after the arrival of the OCR Nats in 2006. The first KS4 course have finished in May/June 2008 and the initial results are very positive.

Structure

There are four flavours of award apart from simply recognizing ‘Units’ the National First Award, the National Award, the National First Certificate and the National Certificate.They are the equivalent of 1,2,3 and GCSE’s. Each of the award consists of a large 60 hour unit and a smaller 30 hour unit. This is consist ant with the QCA’s requirement of 90 hours for a GCSE. The same as a DiDA ‘GCSE’. One unit – Unit 1 Business in ICT is compulsory and it is significantly more demanding than any of the other 60 hour units, but it is achievable by a majority of students in the time allotted.

Resources

On the local Moodle sub-site all of these units are available for you to look at, they are also available free for you to download as Moodle backup units to teach from. You need to register on the Moodle instillation, that is how it tracks students and associates their work with them. Even if Moodle is not your VLE it may be worth running an installation just for these resources. There are also units available from the North West Grid for Learning for a one of fee of £800 for all of the units. It would be worth while trying them out first and working out how you are going to use them in the classroom. I must be honest and say that although we bought them I have not been able to use them constructively and efficiently in the classroom.

Resource Philosophy

The resources available to you here especially unit 1 and unit 20, which constitutes our ‘1 GCSE’ offering are divided into ‘Intermediate’ and ‘Higher’ these distinctions are not present in the OCR syllabus but are there as an aide to teaching. The material is ‘finely granulated’ small, easily completed items of work. They are also numbered to help teachers and students to see where they have got to.