IT and Computing Facilities

It’s a fact of life that whatever career you pursue in the future, you will be expected to have well developed computer skills.

South Downs College has superb IT facilities with over 1500 workstations.

Each Microsoft Windows XP workstation is attached to our high-speed curriculum network and has 100MB/s internet access, over 100 multimedia CD ROMs and self-teach programs and all are installed with with the latest software packages including Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Visual Basic, .net and Autodesk Mechanical Desktop, all at your fingertips!

Many classrooms are equipped with electronic smartboards to allow media rich dynamic lessons and exciting new ways to learn.

You don’t have to be studying an IT course to benefit from this either. All courses will have an element of IT and you will encouraged wherever possible to produce your work on a computer.

As a student at College you will be given a username and password, which will allow you use any of the networked computers either whilst in-class or in the Learning Resources Centre when you do not have lectures. The LRC has an automated booking system that allows you to pre-book a computer in one of the Independant Learning rooms up to a week before you need it. This guarantees you a workstation during those busy times and means that you can get on with your coursework.

There are plenty of walk-up workstations for quick browsing or work sessions -- you'll find cybercafé machines in Café North or the Balcony Café as well as walk-up machines in the College Advice and Guidance area and Room 101.

If you have a computer at home you can always get access to your College work folders. You will also be given a College email account with on-line Web Mail access - you can send and receive College email even when you are not at College!

In addition to the Microsoft Windows workstations, we also have the latest Apple Macintosh computers - iMacs and Mac Minis with industry standard design packages such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are used by the Art & Design and Media students.

If you'd rather use your own WiFi enabled laptop, netbook, phone or PDA, you can now get free wireless internet access most parts of the College.

See your student handbook or visit the IT Helpdesk for more information.