Year 9 ICT Course

We are looking at changing our year 9 mostly IM orientated course to a more ICT based course, so I am looking at what other school have in place to help facilitate the change to our programme

Rangiora High School have a wonderful programme, Promoting ones self, I like the idea of a theme for the terms work
http://www.rangiorahigh.school.nz/Intranet/Departments/Technology/ICT/Year%209%20Promoting%20Me%20Through%20ICT/Y9_Promoting_Me_Through_ICT.htm
One of the applications that they use is anim8or a free 3d animation solution, there are a number of tutorials on the site that can help with that hard part of getting started.
Also the use of Microsoft Photo Story, this is a wonderful application, getting students involved with digital camera and creation, sounds like something different than using word and publisher.

Also this from Geraldine High School
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 2 periods per week for 1 term

In addition to improving keyboard skills, the students apply the technology process to an ICT environment. They learn to use a database and movie programme, and then design one of each for a given situation. This requires them to research the requirements, design a database and movie to meet the identified specifications, create and improve upon their designs and finally evaluate the finished product. This sets the groundwork for the technology section of the Year 10 and Year 11 Information Management course.

One of the other things that we are looking at is the way evaluation sheets should be included in the curriculum. A example is here
http://www.dida-delivered.org/delivered/d203/1.1/1.1.8.pdf this is one for a graphic product, look at visual style and visual elements.

Also a excel sheet looking at multimedia, integrating excel use into the course http://www.dida-delivered.org/delivered/d202/1.1/evaluation_%20sheet_%20d202_%20section_1.1.xls