Design & Technology
“It's an honour to be trusted with big machines.” — 2nd year boy
Coletines study Design & Technology from the Second Year onwards. Second and Third Year boys have two lessons per week for the whole year, whilst Fourth and Fifth Year boys have two lessons for two terms. There is continuity of course content and structure from Colet Court to St Paul's. For example, work with mechanisms is developed progressively through a number of projects done at Colet Court. This area of knowledge forms part of the work examined at GCSE, both in the theory paper and as supportive content for the practical project work, in which it might also be combined with electronics and elements of computer control.
The Fifth Year course at Colet Court is divided into two ten-week sessions. One focuses on product design using the exciting tools of computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacture (CAM). This enables design to flow seamlessly into making by allowing dimensionally realistic designs to be drawn and manipulated on screen, and then manufactured by a direct link to a machine tool. An important element of the design-and-make procedure is the final critical evaluation, followed by recommendations for 'future development'.
Learn to control a robotic vehicle in systems & control
The second session in the Fifth Year is an introduction to systems & control. Boys learn how to program a Picaxe microprocessor chip, leading to the control of a small robotic vehicle. The courses in product design and systems & control relate directly to work done later at St Paul's.
