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Originally Posted by Tomkat
Now Access really only falls under those categories in "exchanging and sharing information". It doesn't feature heavily in the National Curriculum at all, and that's because ICT isn't about teaching people how to use Word/Excel/Powerpoint. The idea of teaching is to use those as a tool to learn skills.
For instance, in History you probably hated having to learn the dates of battles or information. You weren't being tested on your memory though. That'd be retarded. You were being trained to think chronologically and to relate one event to another by seeing the repercussions throughout history.
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I think the only reason that this is contentious is that you've seemingly positioned yourself as thinking that Excel is a simpler analogue of Access, which is demonstrably bollocks. Your previous posts implied that what you were teaching your students was misrepresentative.
For example, whilst a woodwork teacher could feasible demonstrate how to shape wood with a knife, I'd be better off with a chisel. I'm learning the same skill through the use of both, but one is clearly not the right tool for the job.
Access does indeed probably only fall under that category highlighted, but that's no excuse for trying to shoe-horn other applications into its space.
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I did KS3 ICT now nearly 9 years ago, so I'm making assumptions that it's not changed that much. Our task was to implement a 'stock reorder system' for a cinema, involving minimum stock reorder levels and the like. It was taught using conditional formatting and filters in Excel - this was retarded then, and it's retarded now. Instead of making a system that worked as the requirements specified, we spent more time fighting Excel and wondering why it couldn't make pretty reports for us like we needed. If our IT teacher had arsed himself, he could have taught us the requisite skills in Access in two classes. Perhaps I'm bitter about IT teachers who don't know their shit, but a bunch of us wasted a lot of time on something that another tool could have performed because the teacher didn't know what the other tool could do.