ICT at key stage 3    (Year 9)

• Ask pupils to e-mail their remote partners to establish links and build cooperative relationships.
• Ask pupils to identify their specific remote partner(s) and start to share information about themselves and their context.

• Discuss pupils' interests, what they would like to investigate and would be willing to share with their remote partners.
• Ask the class to formulate questions and decide on the contextual information to share in initial e-mail with remote partners. Ask pupils to prepare their communication and send their e-mails.
• Demonstrate how to identify what information is needed.
• Access to video conferencing could enable effective face-to-face negotiation at this stage.

• Ask pupils to consider areas of mutual interest with their remote partners. Ask them to develop and negotiate questions and hypotheses.
• Prepare a questionnaire. Ask pupils to determine the next step and agree a 'contract', eg completion dates, sample size, format of data to be exchanged.
• Identify and agree potential success criteria with pupils.

• This activity involves the collection of 'our data' to be shared with a remote partner.
• Revise with pupils how to design an electronic database structure, spreadsheet or CSV (comma separated variable) - the main points are the agreed 'fields' and type of data.
• Ask pupils to prepare sample data and test the database with this data. Ask them to refine the system in readiness for real data.
• Review the principles of verification and validation.
• Ask pupils to go through the data collection process, prepare for sharing the data with their remote partner and send the data.

• Ask pupils to enter data into the database, the structure of which has already been agreed, with due regard to its verification and validity.

• Ask pupils to complete initial queries of data and share their findings with the class.
• Ask them to prepare a report to share the initial findings with their remote partners and communicate these to the partner.
• Pupils need to react and negotiate as a result of mutually shared information and preliminary findings/analysis.
• To assist in the preparation of reports, show pupils how to organise content into a whole piece of writing with the relationship between points clearly signalled and with paragraphs structured to develop points by using evidence.
• Explain the effect of different aspects of formality in language.

• Ask pupils to complete their data analysis. Ask pupils to evaluate the software tools they have used to build the database and consider its limitations and constraints.
• Ask pupils to prepare the final project report and present their findings to the whole class, then share them with their remote partners.