A COURSE designed to in-still ICT skills in secondary school students for the future has proven to be a success.

Emma Williams of St Joseph’s Catholic High School has designed and implemented an ICT Award.

The ICT literacy program is aimed at equipping students with the essential basic computer skills required for academic life and for life after academia.

Mrs Williams’ course can be completed to a level of bronze, silver and gold.

Students from year groups 7 to 10 that have already flourished under the scheme, gaining gold include: Kelsie Weir, Lucy Brown, Ruby Sanderson, Dylan Evans, Scarlett Wainwright, Katherine Caine, Joseph Walker.

Mrs Williams created the course, setting the criteria for each stage, supporting the students remotely throughout January and February.

Each lesson was delivered through online teaching platform Quizizz where students watched a YouTube video before completing a series of questions.

Students that received the Bronze Award were able to access their Microsoft Account, Teams and assignments. They also demonstrated an understanding of email etiquette, accessing and organising drives and attaching work to assignments.

The Silver Award involved showing knowledge of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Publisher.

The Gold Standard involved showing life skills through ICT for example being able to produce a CV and covering letter for a job application using Microsoft Word.

Gold Standard students also demonstrated that they could use Excel for budgeting financially.

One of the lessons covered digital literacy in the future, why it is needed and how it will play a part.

Mrs Williams has created a resource for the school with the ICT syllabus. In her plan for the digital literacy award she said: “All videos are on YouTube and are easy to share if required.

“There will also be a document where staff can access all the links in one place.

“The quizzes are also free and available for teachers to issue to students if they feel they need to do it again.

She said: “Everything I have produced will be accessible and free to any educators which means we can keep re-issuing the program to each new year 7 group each year.”