BTEC IT

How is the year going to work? 

There are 4 units that you have to complete over your two years at Prendergast School. 

In your specification, these are Units 1, 2, 3 and 5. 

Year 12 will cover units 1 and 3. 

Year 13 will cover units 2 and 5.

The specification will be available on your Moodle. 

Year 12 will be covered by Mr Jackson, year 13 is split between Mr Gordon and Mr Veldtman. 

Expectations of the course

1. Treating the computers with respect 
2. No eating or drinking in the computer room 
3. Absolutely NO plagiarism, this includes the use of AI chatbots. 
4. Listen to what others have to say

Objectives

• To investigate social media products
• To explore how social media products are created to provide meaning and engage audiences 

How many different social media can you name? 

What features do these social media include? 

Bonus question: How do these features keep users engaged with the platform? 

Profile Pictures and usernames

While a username can be useful in letting people know your name, it sometimes isn't enough, for e.g., if you know more than one John Smith.

So the majority of social media allow you to add a profile picture as well to give a visual aid reminding people which John Smith you are. 

Biographies and Links

Your biography is an area of your profile in which you can write a short description about your account. 

Along side this you can add links to different social media or to websites to invite your viewers to check out your other pages and items.

Stories and Live Streams

Your stories are a short length post that are disposable and can be shared around by other accounts.

You can add in extra features to this including polls, questions, locations, mentions, music, links and keywords. 

Live streams have got the additional engagement of talking to your viewers directly, getting instant feedback from them and being able to respond to their comments quicker. 

Posts and Keywords

Posts allow for a more permanent publishing of your content and can include many features similar to a story. 

Most importantly, the Keywords. These are the hashtags that you add to a post to bring in new viewers. 

If you use a more common hashtag, such as #l4l, then you are going to get a high amount of viewers, but your post is likely to get buried quickly. 

However, a rarer hashtag, such as #augustbluemoon2023, will have very few posts added to it, but it will be around the top of the page for a lot longer. So when someone does click on it, your post is much more likely to be at the top. 

Activity 

Pick any business you like and then build a social media profile around them including the features we have spoken about. 

Design this profile on paper, there is no expectation to create an account on any online social media. 

It is encouraged for you to try to design your own business, including a logo, name and URL (for links in the bio).