If I die, I forgive you: if I recover, we shall see - Spanish proverb
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Old-school IT teaching needs a major overhaul
BEFORE THE UK GOVERNMENT rushes headfirst into its consultation process for overhauling the IT curriculum in schools, I'd suggest it read up on Nick D'Aloisio.
The 16-year old has already developed a string of apps, and his latest has attracted the attention - as well as a $250,000 investment - from private equity firm Horizons Ventures, whose previous investments have been into Skype, Facebook and Spotify.
The app that has caused this excitement is Summly, a tool designed to improve web browsing. It automatically summarises search results, web pages and news articles to make content easier to consume and ensure search results are relevant and can be easily evaluated, so says the app's summary. While it's proving popular so far, with tens of thousands of downloads, the reviews are mediocre, with many pointing out it needs a lot of fine tuning to work as outlined.
But then again, with $250,000 in his pocket, D'Aloisio now has the resources to do a lot of fine tuning.
To generate that amount of skills and cash, D'Aloisio surely had an excellent IT teacher? Well, actually he didn't even study computing at school. Instead, as with most of the younger generation - let's say, a minimum of 20 years younger than the most youthful politician - he is self-taught. He was using a Macbook and programs such as movie editing software from age nine, followed by downloading the Iphone development kit and coding his first piece of software when he was 12.
Based on this example, the government is missing the point about the IT curriculum. Earlier this week, education secretary Michael Gove announced plans to revamp the current IT curriculum in schools to stop children from being bored by the subject and to give them the skills wanted by employers. The current IT programme in schools will be withdrawn this September and the consultation for this will begin this month.
"Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch," Gove said.
Teachers will also be able to decide how they teach the subject, and universities and businesses will be given opportunities to help design courses and exams. The announcement comes after much pressure from industry to shift the focus of IT education in schools away from ICT with its lessons on Excel and Word, and towards computer science programming.
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All this talk about changing the content and the teaching methods is great...but worthless if they dont change the final exams to reflect the changes.
"It is a myth that children understand technology. A myth promulgated by ignorant adults who think that programming a video recorder takes genius."
Too damn right! All this "the kid's a genius - do what he's doing!" bullshit gets in the way of actual reform. I knew plenty of cocksure "geniuses" at university who ended up dropping out because they couldn't hack the rigours of the course, and it wasn't because it was going too slow for them, either.
I totally sympathise with people who feel that their educators are just treading water, but the remedy is to actually reward the teaching profession properly so that they provide quality, instead of doing like every idiotic government since god-knows-when and blaming the teachers for everything while ridiculing, overworking and underpaying them.
Teachers know and teach the curriculum. The curriculum is set according to the agenda of the politicians in charge.
Teachers know nothing outside the curriculum because there is no advantage in knowing it. Why teach a kid how to programs in Python, run a network or debug an app when none of it is in the curriculum and therefore won't be in the exam. Kid could be a computing genius but they'll still fail because they don't know the curriculum.
Until education gets away from wrote learning a narrow set of facts nothing will change.And that's for every subject not just IT.
No teaches kids how to learn or think any more. The last thing teacher want is a kid that actively challenges what is written in the curriculum. Especially since half of it is wrong, or filled with jargon 15 year out of date and never used outside education.
e.g. Who refers to Office as an "integrated package" apart from teachers?
I work as the IT manager in a school. I don't just do the IT Admin side - I like to be actively involved in promoting computer use and new strategies in the classroom and with teaching.
I'm continually frustrated by the lack of teachers knowledge and even more so by their lack of desire to learn. How can students learn - when the teachers don't even want too?
About the comment - teaching them to become Microsoft users. I agree to an extent. Microsoft products and PCs that run them are still the best option for schools - they are affordable - and with the budget restraints that I have in place - it makes it hard to look at Apple products (and don't talk to me about Linux). But students and staff should be taught that the PC is a tool. The software on it is also a tool. A competent tradesman uses the tools that get the job done. I certainly believe that schools should be willing to spend on PC's, Mac's, Tablets (Android, Windows, iOS) and others. But with this, they must be prepared to learn and teach the products and platforms.
The one point that I want to make also in regards to this is that there are a lot of students that really do need the basics. It is here that I don't know how to change the face of IT. How does one learn to type competently if it's not taught. How do they learn to write that award winning essay if they aren't taught to use Word (or similar)?
I see a lot of students (Primary) that do not even have a competent use of the mouse. They don't have a computer at home. I have even been in a class where a student cried at having to use the computer!
Teaching programming or other IT related skills may be the answer to fixing IT - but it's not for everyone.
Maybe teachers should be taught to identify the talented ones in IT. There are still plenty of people who want to be a typist. There are plenty who want to be researchers. There are plenty who just want to draw. Identify skills and work with that first...
Wow...
Following the link to the app really reminded me how much i despisePopularity the built-for-[this phone model only]-"web"
I really wish i could get over that, and start cashing in on building stuff that only works in their tiny treehouse.
Then i click the "View More By This Developer"-link, and instead of getting to the "More By This Developer"-page, im showed to the "download itunes"-page.
And i think, how can i jump into a system that SO MUCH has to die?
But the money....
The idea the a few bright children should be teaching the rest is puddled.
It is a myth that children understand technology. A myth promulgated by ignorant adults who think that programming a video recorder takes genius.
Children need instruction from people who understand databases and software engineering.
Here's to teaching kids about computing instead of trainining them to become Microsoft users.