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I am Mal Weightman and I am responsible for Electronic Products within D&T at the Queen Katherine School, Kendal.
One great pleasure of living here is that I am a keen climber and the Lake District gives me lots of scope!
After I left school I was in the Merchant Navy for four years. I then did a Mechanical Engineering degree and worked in industry for eight years. I did a PGCE in 1993 – 4 and taught at Cockermouth for five years before moving here in 1999.
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The school draws many of its pupils from the surrounding small villages and isolated farms of South Lakeland. It has a consistent record of high academic achievement, with ‘A’ level results that are superior to many of the private schools in the neighbourhood.
There are two distinctive aspects of design and technology at the Queen Katherine School.
One is that we make a big effort to involve our pupils in external events and competitions. The second is that we make extensive use of large-scale CAD/CAM.
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The department strongly supports pupil involvement in national events and competitions. This raises the profile of the school in the local community, builds our pupils’ self esteem and gives them a broader educational experience.
For example, in 2006, four pupils from Y9 and Y10 won £200 as runners up in the ‘New club of the year’ category of Young Engineers for Britain.
They added another £250 to this by being judged to engage in the best team work that was observed during a two hour long problem solving activity at Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
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The school is a Technology College, and is very well equipped for design and technology. We thought carefully about the ways in which we could develop CAD/CAM and made the decision to invest in relatively large-scale CAM facilities.
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Obviously this is more expensive than using smaller machines, but it enables pupils to use CAM to produce very attractive large scale ‘real’ products.
For example, most of the signage around the school has been produced by ‘A’ level Product Design students using CAD/CAM.
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Pupils have also used CAD/CAM to produce a variety of furniture used in the school.
The CAD software we use is:
- Techsoft 2D Design
- Google Sketchup
- Galaad Mill (2.5 D)
- Kay (3D)
- Edumaker
The CAM machines in the department are:
- A Unimatic flat bed router with a 1m x 1m working area
- Two Unimatic CNC44 machines (approximately A3 working area)
- A Unimatic CNC 20 machine (approximately A4 working area)
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We offer all areas of design and technology – food, textiles, graphic products, resistant materials and electronics.
When I first came to the school we had the ‘traditional’ carousel of short projects in all areas crammed into each of Y7, Y8 and Y9 – with the traditional problems of lack of continuity and superficial contact with pupils. |
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We have now moved to a system where, in Y7 and Y8, pupils spend a term in each of the focus areas, with two or three 50 minute lessons per week. This gives a much more systematic, coherent introduction to the range of material areas.
At the end of Y8 the pupils select their three favoured areas and in Y9 we arrange that they are able to work in depth in two of these areas for half a year each. At the end of Y9 they then select one area for their design and technology GCSE (which does not have to be one of the areas they worked in during Y8). |
