Introduction
Steve Jobs (Apple), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), Sergey Brin (google), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) are billionaires. Could you be the next tech billionaire?
Angry Birds, Call of Duty, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Amazon, Google’s search engine, PowerPoint, IOS, Android, Office 365, Snapchat and many more. Computer programmers wrote the code to make them work. New cars, mobile phones, entertainment systems, fighter planes, power stations and space craft will all contain computers. Computer programmers will write the code to make them work.
In an increasingly technological age, computer programmers will be increasingly sought after. Futureproof yourself with a qualification in Computer Science. Computer Science is the course to choose if you want to learn how computers work, learn to write your own computer programs and make your own computer games.
The Course
The course is split into two parts.
In the first part, you will learn to write computer programs using the Python programming language. You’ll learn about the different parts of a computer, how computers store data, operating systems, application software, networks and data transmission.
In the second part, you will write HTML code to create web pages and learn to create two dimensional Pacman style games using Greenfoot (a Java based game programming environment). You’ll learn about the Internet, algorithms (how we develop ways of writing programs to solve problems), computer programming and legal & ethical issues related to our use of computers. The vast majority of Computer Science lessons is practical based.
Assessment
A Python programming task, undertaken in the latter part of Year 10, will be worth 20% of the GCSE.
At the end of Year 11 there will be a practical exam (HTML and Greenfoot) which will be worth 30% of the GCSE and a written exam worth 50% of the GCSE.
Progression
GCSE Computer Science is the perfect preparation for studying A Level Computer Science or any other technical subject.