IT DEPARMENT

Syllabus overview

Fifth year

A one-year course is offered to students which covers a broad range of IT-related topics. In order to keep up with developments within IT, the course is modified annually but covers such topics as:

• Computer hardware: the definition and purpose of CPU, RAM, Hard Drives, USB, hub and so forth.
• A 2D graphics package with animation facilities.
• 3D modelling with animation and simulation.
• The Internet: history, overview of structure. The difference between the WWW and the Internet.
• Networking: intranet and Internet.
• Creating a simple web site using the Dreamweaver package.
• The use of CSS to control the overall look and style of a website.
• Using JavaScript to enhance web pages.
• Databases: creating databases using phpMyAdmin
• Using PHP to produce web pages dynamically.
• Creating an online retail web site web site which uses a database.
• Robotics and AI: Using Lego Mindstorms to create and control some simple robots.

Other appropriate topics may be added during the year.

Transition Year

This IT course has a much sharper focus and specifically aims to enable students to build an online database-driven web site. In recent years, the web sites have been based around a theme such as airline reservation, hotel booking, sports equipment rental or similar.

This year the theme is based on transport systems - buying tickets for journeys on bus, DART, train, LUAS and so on. Students will aim to allow a user to select a journey which may involve different tickets and times and to print out an appropriate 'ticket' and request the appropriate fee.