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British Schoolkids To Be Taught Computer Coding
An anonymous reader writes "The UK government has finally decided to do something about the dire state of IT and computer science teaching in the country: it will create a new 'IT-centric' General Certificate of Secondary Education that will cover computational principles, systemic thinking, software development and logic. The current ICT GCSE has been lambasted for boring kids to death with lessons on using Word and Excel, rather than teaching computer programming."
That is all I did in 5th grade which was the only time I got to program at school, on an Apple II+/IIe
They will find a use for all of those BBC micros that have been lying around for 25 years.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is a really good thing. As the summary notes, this will teach kids logic and thinking systematically. Knowing how to program isn't just a useful skill in the direct sense of programming things and possibly being employed that way. It also does a really good job of making one think precisely and carefully. There's also another advantage which is it helps kids appreciate that the technology around them are things they can understand and don't need to treat like they are magic.
Most people don't become programmers by choice. Why force the 99% of kids that would not otherwise have an interest in computers to suffer through some poorly-thought-out introduction to Java?
I did GCSE computing in 1998, and my coursework was a programming task (modelling the 3-body problem). At my school, however, I'd been taught to program aged 7. If I'd started programming aged 14, I'd have found it a lot harder. The government should be making programming a primary school activity, not leaving it to an optional course later on. Ideally, programming should be the first thing children are taught to do with computers at school - it was for me, and after that everything else is easy.
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I did my IT GCSE in 1999, and came out with an E at the end of it. I hadn't done any coursework at all, as it was just to mind-numbingly painful to dumb down my thinking to give the answer they wanted. The course seriously needed updating.
I'm a network manager in local government now. Goes to show how appropriate what they taught was to the real world.
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Yeah that's how l learned CS too...
I did ICT at GCSE level, and A-Level, both times the course was fairly boring. Particularly the "here is how you create some basic documents" sections. One of the modules was to create a small website - we were allowed to use Dreamweaver, but so the course was somewhat challenging I did it in notepad (got full parks for that module too).
Once I got to University to study Computer Science, I started to learn actual interesting things, including programming (we hadn't done it at school, perhaps a little bit into Excell macros, but nothing major), but there were a lot of people in the first year of the Uni course who were struggling to learn the basic concepts, so improvement in the basics earlier on is definatly needed.
I imagine they could make a pretty interesting class in Excel if they'd move beyond formatting cells and doing simple sums and averages. They could even get into macro programming, but even without there's a lot of stuff you can do with it.
Back in my day, when I was bored in school, I would just ditch class to program. During that time, I developed majority of my first engine. Seriously though, I think this is a great idea. Computers are so much part of our lives these days, and will only become even more so, that everyone should know the basics. I find programming also helps you practice other important concepts, like the ability to break apart complex tasks into manageable pieces instead of curling up in a ball and crying.
There are the 85% of kids who will do this and benefit from logical thinking as well as a real skill. Then there are the 15% who won't cope, and might be better off learning how to use a word processor, or even just that smashing shop windows and stealing is not the best way to get a happy and fulfilling life.
I the mid to late 80s, when I did my computer science GCEs and A levels, it was a proper computer science curriculum with computer architecture, language theory, machine code, high level languages (basic/pascal/prolog) databases etc. As with the other GCEs and A levels there was a lot of university involvement in setting the exams, so the curriculum led smoothly into the university computer science curriculum.
So this isn't a new thing, just a return to the old thing.
Evil people are out to get you.
Sounds like a course I'd have been very interested in. As it was, our school viewed IT as a nuisance subject as we were all fully capable of using the MS Office suite (which as far as I can tell was the basis for the GCSE) and we'd have all fallen asleep during lessons, or spent hours playing the hidden game in Excel.
In the entire course of my school career (I'm only 24 and didn't go on to tertiary education) the closest I came to programming was a couple of weeks in primary school playing with a large robotic tortoise.
Finally, a proposal for teaching kids to think with their entire bodies. Hi-hip-horay, Brits!
When I started secondary school in the early 90's we had BBC Basics in our ICT suite. By the time I left we had PCs. They upgraded the computers but forgot to upgrade the teachers. Our ICT lessons consisted of training the teacher how to make text italic, how to enter data into a spreadsheet or (more frequently) how to mute the sound if he had a hangover. As a consequence none of us bothered to take ICT GCSE.
Quite a few people here agree instantly when someone says that there should/will be mandatory programming classes. Here. On this nerd-oriented website. No bias there, right?
Forcing these classes on people will, like, totally make people 900% smarter, man. It'll improve peoples' logic even if they have no interest in the class and forget everything entirely!
Programming is a specialized field, guys. I know a lot of us are programmers, and yes I think courses should be offered in all middle and high schools so people who want to can learn more. But it is not for everyone -- it requires a fair amount of logical and critical thinking skills that public schools don't really cater to, as well as a decent knowledge of mathematics. Even more, it is basically learning an entirely new language. So yes, starting young is a good thing, but let's be honest: this is something most of the population simply can't be expected to do, and public schools are there to teach essential foundational skills, not specialized skills. That is what college is for.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Why not teach them how to construct geometric proofs instead? And this is a serious question.
The issue I have with teaching computer programing at such a young age is that programing languages tend to be transient. C or JAVA? A few years go it was BASIC vs. Fortran. I have had good C class that taught me theory which I use today – even though I know longer work in C. But if the kids are just learning how to hack – in the bad sense or the word – twisty rabbit warren logic type of code – then I would think more harm than good was done.
I think at that young age there is better ways to beef up their Cognitive skills (Chess, math - Heck – even a Jesuit priest teaching theology)
I did my computer studies O Level in 1977. My sons' ICT courses have looked mind-numbingly dull in comparison, so it is a good thing, though rather late, for the authorities to realize that this is needed.
I am concerned about who they will get to teach the course though.
I learned touch on a typewriter in grade-school and I have benefited me immensely ever since. That's one of the basics they don't but really should teach kids. Some basic bash commands would probably also be very helpful, but that requires them to switch from Wintendo in the educational systems. I never once had need for the meaningless Word lessons I was forced to take. Teaching the programming would be great, but I don't quite get why they would want to teach C or Java or something like that to _all_ children. Giving them useful basic computer skills sounds more meaningful.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Sure, it is boring as hell, but it has taken me years to get rid of old bad habits and I still can't type nearly as well as some of my office mates. Quality typing is a skill that will be used for a lifetime in almost any profession.
The current ICT GCSE has been lambasted for boring kids to death with lessons on using Word and Excel, rather than teaching computer programming.
More kids will be using Word and Excel later in life than will be coding--by orders of magnitude. Excel is only as boring as you make it (something most teachers don't understand).
When we start making curriculums that are driven by niche interests and by what is considered "fun" or not, society suffers.
Where can I sign up to be a teacher?
*Edit* The Capcha it just asked me for was "anarchy" spooky eh
Bragging about being a network admin for local government? Thats nothing to be proud of...maybe you failed that class because you weren't willing or were too dumb to learn the stuff they were teaching and used 'oh its too dumbed down and far beneath me' as an idiotic rationalisation? If you knew everything already, there's no excuse to fail the exam, right?
First they will have to reach consensus on the programming language they will use.
Just ended school in 2005 there (2 extra years in secondary), I done computer programming in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th years.
Is this England only or something? (Scotland here)
Or do they actually mean those 2 first years before the class branches off to a specialized course? Could be useful since I know a bunch of people who took the class never wanted to continue it because it wasn't what they expected at all.
We had Computing class, and an Administration class, Computing was essentially Computer Science / Software Development / Networking / etc. Lite, Administration was spreadsheets, word processing and all that fun stuff.
ICT in the first 2 years was literally "this is how you click, here, learn how to touch type" and basic computer stuff you'd expect.
Good to see that they are placing Word and Excel classes outside the province of "Computer" classes, probably in the realm of Business Classes as they should be. I get very upset when I see my own children in a "Computer" class learning how to use Word or Excel. It's a total waste off my kids time. Anyone who needs a class in order to use these simple apps is beyond help. Sounds like these people are at least pointed in the right direction.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
How about abolishing the child labor laws as well as minimum wage laws, teach the kids to read, write and count, (of-course some real history and economics would be nice) and then LET those, who want to get out there and take low paying jobs learning skills at work.
There is no better way to learn skills, and majority of people don't need to learn any academics beyond basic reading/arithmetic.
People DO need to learn about reality though, this needs to come from history and economics, real economics, not bullshit propaganda, that is pushed in schools. Here is what I am talking about - watching an hour of this, is much more education about economics and politics than most of what kids learn on these subjects in their entire span of education.
Allowing kids actually to work would do wonders for society as well. This would allow debts to be reduced, as majority of kids don't need higher education and don't need to go to colleges to take binge drinking classes disguised as "majoring in sociology". Allowing kids to enter work force earlier and cheaply would reduce their further dependence on any government. Of-course this must be coupled with abolishment of any such programs as social security.
By the way, on the issue of NAMING bill and naming programs in government: there needs to be HONESTY in naming conventions. The bills really shouldn't be named by those who push for them.
A "Jobs Act"? Who is against jobs? It's like Perry said during a debate: I hate cancer! - Fucking genius. Who loves cancer? Vote for Perry, he hates cancer!
I am saying this because the very naming conventions are designed to provoke an emotional response, which directs the population. Just because you call something "Social Security" doesn't actually mean that it will provide real security rather than eventual Social Destruction.
Naming something a "Jobs Act" doesn't mean it will actually create jobs or it's for jobs.
Anyway, a good idea in a bad economy, where there is high unemployment would be to make employing people much simpler and cheaper, rather than trying to engineer a way out that is only going to guarantee further destruction (printing and dumping money into the system.)
As to kids programming: some are replying here that it's a good thing to teach kids that, because it would teach them logic and other skills.
In reality most kids don't need to take these courses, just like most kids don't need courses zoology, but they could learn quite a bit if they were allowed to work, to go into apprenticeships. That's what would really help quite a number of kids and the economy.
You can't handle the truth.
Noooooo! This means there might actually be a generation to replace me before I retire!
Programming is pretty much a job for life in the UK. There is currently nobody coming along to replace the existing generation of programmers that learned on the Spectrum, C64 & BBCb.
It's quite common to see grey haired developers these days. We've got nobody under the age of 38. I employed my first great-grandfather last month.
That said, our generation was *particularly* prolific.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
This is a good step for UK school children I just wish the US would require similar courses. I have worked in a college for several years now and have been amazed how little the students know when they start their first programming, networking, hardware, etc. I once had a class of 20 students and on the first day I asked if anyone knew what binary was and not a single student was able to answer, though my expectations were not high in this class because it was a group of Business major students who were required to take an Intro to Computers course for their major.
Computers have become such a fundamental part of our everyday lives that I just find it amazing that students are not required to learn programming or other computing fundamentals. Even if they never program again in their lives the logic processing that students can learn from programming is essential in many positions. When facing issues in their positions it is often beneficial to take similar steps to what you would in programming like in sales you would take a systematic approach to try to sell an item. Sales people have to use a lot of IF/ELSE logic to determine the best way to get the customer to buy an item. For example, my brother used to sell books and every person he went to he always started with the same greeting and depending on how the person responded to the greeting he would use a strategy based on that persons response. If the person said they did not have children so would not need the books he would ask if they had any grandchildren, nieces or nephews, or neighbor children who would benefit from a gift of my brother's books from the person my brother was trying to sell to. Heck, you can even use programming logic to try to make friends
Another useful reason to do this is to assist future programming college students to determine if that is actually the track for them. At my college we see on average 30% dropout rate after the first to programming classes in the CS major. By the time of graduation we have even had less than 45% of the original students in the program. A major reason for this is that there are a large number of students coming to college thinking that they will land a good job out of college because they have CS training, but when they start learning how difficult programming can be or realize that they are unable to grasp programming logic. This trend is even worse in our video game degree because we have many students who come thinking they will learn how to make visually stunning games but then never make any art in the game and instead have to program pre-existing art resources.
I was lucky enough to receive an Acorn Electron as a young child and then a little later on, an Acorn BBC B followed by the BBC Master 512. I remember at times being envious of my friends with their Sinclair Z8s and scores of games, but looking back at it now I am so glad I grew up with the same machines they used at school. I remember my dad saving computer programs on to tape that were broadcasted over the radio and I soon became engrossed in learning how computers 'worked'. I taught myself to program in BASIC at around the age of 8 and was lucky enough to have some good teachers who, whilst knowing nothing about programming, allowed me to work on these skills during school hours. For a project on Egypt at age 9, instead of writing about it, I made a graphical story of Egypt with pyramids and sphinx's scrolling by on screen, with text describing the scene.
When I got to secondary school, we had supposedly proper Computer Science lessons. These were awful and rather depressing. The teachers obviously had no clue, they may have had backgrounds in engineering or electronics but anything about computers was dictated to us from very basic textbooks with no practical hands-on time. We had a few Acorn Archimedes that I was longing to play with but for some reason these were tucked away and intead we were plonked in front of RM Nimbus machines with virtually no software to play with. Eventually things improved a little when a new teacher started to take our lessons. Although he was not a coder, he somehow guided me into learning some machine code and from there I progressed into Pascal, C, etc. As far as I know, it wasn't part of the syllabus but he could see that's what I needed to learn and gave me the freedom to go learn it.
As far as I understand, things havn't much changed over the years. Computer Science (or whatever they call it nowadays in UK schools) is less about the science and more about using a computer to do general tasks. The only way this will change if schools have access to teachers who understand the science and the thought processes required to get down and dirty with a computer.
Why force the 99% of kids
Most computer classes are an elective. Here is CA, some schools are offering band or typing. It would be great to offer this as an option. I doubt that this is compulsory for all students. I took a CS class in Junior High and all we did was programming. (Apple IIe) I agree that Java might not be the best language, maybe web programming (php and JS) is more accessible since they do not need to compile and they can all produce their own websites to show their friends.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
While( I was in the last high school classes)
....I was being taught programming using pseudocode
....It can work out really well when looking for a relevant uni degree
....You can then
........Study( Computer Science )
........Study( Maths )
....And be a happy geek forever after, with a good (logic && algorithmic) background
....goto die
....You will (suck at it) && (hate it)
....And boo computer geeks forever after
....goto die
If ( you have a knack for this sort of thing)
else
It clearly worked for me
My writing skillz have become unsurpassable
Fortunately I wasn't taught Huffman, else I would have been modded "troll - random bytecode"
die:
exit(0)
So instead of a GED they can now earn a BOFH?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
But will the teachers be able to teach it?
They legitimately teach classes on microsoft word? my elementary school teacher took 20 minutes to explain how to use wordperfect to us, but then we were writing friendly letters in no time :/
Give the kids WarioWare DIY for Nintendo DS and they'll learn event-driven programming. Thank you Wario.
The number of entries for GCSE ICT has halved in the last five years, and not because the course is insufficiently challenging or technical. The reason is that due to the league tables schools have a powerful incentive to push their students into worthless 'vocational' courses that are even easier and duller than GCSE. Making the GCSE more technically challenging will not improve this state of affairs.
Given that most ICT teachers can't even use Word and Excel properly, or even teach, how the fuck are they going to teach programming.
Some of the most useless bastards I have ever met are ICT teachers, mostly left overs from business studies,or PE, or chucked out from private sector as just too crap.I even saw one that couldn't recognize that the reason the computer wasn't working was because it was not there at all, i.e. the monitor was sitting on the desk, without the PC underneath it. and yes there were 30 others in the room, so spot the difference was not a problem.
Though I think teaching programming is not a bad idea, how on gods green earth they will achieve it I have no idea, I guess through Govian* magic of some sort
*Michael Gove Smug, condescending, patronising wanker, nearly the most unlikeable member of the coalition front bench, but he has a lot of competition.
Will take more than the flacid platitudes. The teaching staff need a good degree of training, not 'rote', and oh how nice it would be that they loved this subject as I do. One can only hope that they hit the nail on the head with this back in my day (remember Logo?), and there are enough good Birtish heads to come up with an idea or two - the BBC of old perhaps. But please god - not BIG business and BIG Marketing crap. And back to staff - they can barely scrape out Maths teachers these days .. decent skilled computing people are so thin on the ground, a classroom of moaning scrotes will never seem appealing.
Gritty.
I did a program review at one high school here in the U.S. They were teaching them to use Microsoft Excel, doing a payroll 'app' I guess you could call it. But they had to manually calculate the tax withholding, etc. I asked the teacher why they weren't showing them VBA, pretty easy, or even a basic cell formula. With a straight face the teacher told me you needed all high math for computer programming. Um no, you don't. Basic alegbra will get you pretty far. If you understand integer and modulo functions you're pretty well off. I actually wrote something akin to that in my review.
Should this be edited to be titled "English (poss. Welsh) Schoolkids To Be Taught Computer Coding"?
I have a certificate from the Scottish Qualifications Authority from when I was 16 in 2004 showing Computing Standard Grade 1. I was taught lots of programming and had to submit a portfolio including some scripts.
As someone who came up from machine code through assembler, C, and a variety of high level languages, I used to be a bit snooty about this approach, but now I tend to think "if it is Turing-complete, functional and has the ability to do basic graphics, who cares?"
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I took ICT GCSE last year. The amount of times CIE changed the endorsed books on their website was ridiculous. I had to buy 4 books on the same subject and read them all in order to evaluate which one would be my primary study book.
The funny thing is that all those years of teaching Microsoft Office to student's can be done in one summer: pick up one of MS's books on Microsoft Office and study it. Then take Microsoft's Certified Application Specialist exam instead and be done with it.
I really do not understand why MS Office has to be taught by the school when MS provides adequate resources to do the same thing better.
The syllabus is a complete joke and CIE is too. /rant
...not until the second half of my final year there, which was the year 2000.
Consequently, there was no such thing as an "IT" course at my school. Which was a shame, because I wanted to be a programmer...
Fortunately I was able to get a Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Computing A-Level at college, though the Computing A-level again sucked - none of the teachers actually knew how to program, and the only resource I had was a book they told me to read - consequently I got a C, and that was the SECOND HIGHEST mark for my whole year in that course.
The entry requirements for CompSci at University here don't actually require any prior computing knowledge - it's all about the Maths skills, becuase they teach you to think about problem solving and the like, so I was able to then become a programmer :D ...but my secondary school (and to a point my college) was most definitely not much of a help in this...
... when the tools are hideous which may be kind of counter productive. IMHO most tools and programming languages are horrible, we need innovation in tools to make life easier right now programming is like knitting by hand with you using other libraries (which were knit by hand) there is not enough automation and offloading of tasks to the computer yet.
That should take care of their computer literacy problem.
I'm showing my age here, but I took an O level in Computer Science in 1985.
However, in school, we were taught by a former programmer and we had to learn two languages: one a low-level teaching language called CECIL (sp?) which was more like a very basic cross between Assembler and C; and Basic. We also learned how to flowchart, test (input and expected output), and how a computer was constructed. This was long before the dominance of MS Office.
It's actually almost laughable to think how basic this education was, but every so often it amazes me that I was this lucky. Examples: like when people talk breathlessly about unit tests and how amazing it is for programmers to learn it - that seems obvious to me because I learned it at the start.
Flowcharting - very early UML. Yup, grok that totally and use it before I even think of sitting at a keyboard even with some basic scripts.
Not relying on one language - hehehe, got that too because we weren't taught one language as the be all and end all.
The funny thing is that I'm not a programmer. I'm a designer - but I can program well enough (statistical algorithms mostly but also text processing, NLP and web stuff). And my education helps me to avoid typical pitfalls that seem to happen often (failing to plan tests, relying on a single language, failing to plan a program at all). I sound really smug about all this but it's saved me bags of wasted effort.
bang goes my karma... again...
The same arguments that IT education does not work and that there are no compelling solutions are made over and over. This simply is NOT TRUE anymore. If I may be so bold as to plug our own research supported by the US National Science Foundation: the data shows that with the right combination of computational thinking tools, curriculum and pedagogical approaches 1) there is huge IT interest by women 2) this can be done in just about all the schools successfully and 3) there is even early evidence of transfer between game design and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) of IT skills. We have research data from thousands of students in various communities ranging from inner city schools, remote rural to Native American communities: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED520742.pdf more papers here: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/
Now please do this in Canada and every other county for that matter.
Government spent money to teach kids to use foreign proprietary tools? Programming definitely seems like a much better route!
One can learn programming only by her-/himself. For that a motivation is needed.. like bad or missing software that asks to be replaced.
Computer classes in schools destroy this motivation by raping the young brain with the bitter world of Windows, Excel and Word... for at least 6 months...
Teaching programming should not require more than answering good questions. If more is needed the motivation is lost and time will be wasted.
Teaching students applications like Excel or Word is not just boring, it is a waste of a student's time. Such applications change regularly and thus students might be better served if they become comfortable with figuring out how to operate them on their own--just as, I imagine, most who comment here learned. Computer programming, however, offers a superior curriculum since students will find that while computer languages may change many of the key concepts and skills they learn by programming will still be relevant. Teaching skills is for this reason superior to teaching mere content. I teach in a field, history, which can sometimes tempt teachers to focus on content. Because I know that students will forget most of the historical narrative I might teach (and most care little for people who died seventeen centuries ago anyway), I focus instead on teaching the skills a historian needs. Thus, a student leaving with a shiny new B.A. might also hope to leave with the ability to interpret documents, to undermine some of the shallow historical narratives by which public opinion is manipulated, and above all to think, speak, and write more clearly.
Most "computing" teachers in UK schools are ICT teachers and wouldn't know how to program (even a decent Excel macro) if it bit them in the bum. As for explaining different sort algorithms. *shudder* Show a typical ICT teacher vb.net or c#.net and they'll have a fit of the vapours. (You DO know that Microsoft have signed up to the scheme?) In addidion, most ICT lessons are used as computer time to complete projects/coursework for other curriculum areas, hence the need to be able to "use" Word and Excel, and cut and paste from a web browser.
ICT lessons are already full of children who are bored to tears, either because the existing material is too easy, or (frighteningly enough) its too difficult. Making things interesting for the top end only means that the bottom end become even more disenchanted and its no fun trying to teach a very mixed ability class thats in a ferment of rebellion. Its not that easy to weed out the poor devils who can't cope. Hmmmm - that goes for the teachers too.
What we need is a renaissance in computer programming in the home. Children need to be able to see how much fun it can be to create something for themselves. They need to have access to personal hardware that can't be easily broken, can be used at home and won't break the bank to own. Programming environments need to be easy to find and work in, while execution should be only a mouseclick away from the editor. Compared with the Basic in a BBC B or a Commodore 64, or even Turbo Pascal 3 on a DOS PC, general programming environments on a modern PC (Windows, Mac or Linux) are too involved and intimidating. At present, the Raspberry Pi initiative seems to be approaching the problem in a useful way. We'll have to see what finally emerges in November and if the Pi gets taken up by the educational establishment.
My fingers are crossed that it has a positive impact!
When I was at school I did O-Level Computer Studies and we programmed mainly on Commodore PETs, which I absolutely love (I check eBay regularly for them, today included, though I've never bought one yet). We also used BBC Model Bs. The whole thing was about programming, and I loved it. Our teacher used to bring his VIC-20 and then his C64 in, so some of us used to go in early and hang out in the computer room.
Then later these new-fangled GCSEs came along and people started renaming Computer Studies to something. I'd like to know when the change happened, and if it was gradual, or an instant change when GCSEs started (the year after I left the Senior school, so must have been the new starters in September '86).
I'm glad they are going back to the thinking of the late '70s on this one.
As opposed to what other kind of coding? Why didn't you just say programming?
Teaching everyone in public school how to program might make more programmers, and maybe even better ones. But even more valuable will be showing the vast majority of people who will never program after they're forced to in class just what the basic practice is like for those of us who do. It won't be some exotic, perhaps damnable mystery. Getting everyone exposed to programming would humanize those of us who turn out to do it a lot.
I don't think it'll help much in protecting nerds from getting stuffed into lockers by jocks. But maybe later when that jock is the useless midlevel manager telling a programmer how the thing works the programmer is automating, or when the jock is thinking about asking a programmer for something, they'll have some recollection about doing it themself a little way back when, and so relate better to the "whiz", and maybe deal with them better.
--
make install -not war
Ahh Excel, is there anything it can't do?
Excel is not under-utilised, it's under represented in school. It has to be the single most over-utilised piece of software on the planet. Its amazing how many dedicated engineering applications which are used and taught at uni are replaced with Excel in the workplace. Need an advanced calculator? Excel! Solve a fault tree to determine failure probabilities? Excel! Calculate the chemical properties in a reactor vessle? Excel!
That is a big problem in the way we are taught at the moment. I've had mechanical engineers come to me to ask me for help with VBA code because someone used a giant excel workbook as a database and coded functions in VBA to that would typically replace your normal SELECT, INSERT etc functions in real databases.
Excel + VBA is boring on the face of it, but the skills are highly useful in the real world.
They use Access for that at my workplace.
Computer Coding? Seriously? Can they also teach people how to write good titles?
Word+Excel : computer programming :: trig & calculus : mathematics
I 'scanned' thru the article searching for what the courses might cover.. did not spot any.
Some tidbits on likely topics being introduced would have been nice
I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the 80's and 90's. Dial-up was only really available to the town the last year I was there. We had computers, no Internet. Our computer guy for the school was shared between four other (and larger) schools.
Computer classes were pretty much non-existent.
What did help, though, was my parents. We had a Vic20 at home, a Commodore 64 later, and then a 486. Between there and the school, I figured out how to get to the command line and do things.
I was "into computers", and my parents were both teachers, so everyone told me I was going to university and taking computer science. Some of it interested me, but I didn't know what I was getting into. I knew what programming was, but it wasn't my favourite.
(That's a lot of I's in there... I'm getting to my point...)
I would have killed to have the Internet and Wikipedia in my teen years. Even more so, I would have loved the ability to take a course to experiment with parts of the "computer" field before I decided (or rather, my parents decided) how I should spend my time after high school.
Not everyone is the same. Everyone doesn't need to be a programmer. But I think it's valuable to make kids take some computer usage courses, and in their later years, make them take some more specialised courses and ALLOW THEM THE CHOICE of what they'd like to experiment with.
Online courses are probably more beneficial for this, as you can offer more specialised courses, and kids who are in smaller towns or in more inaccessible or poor parts of a city have the opportunities they wouldn't have otherwise.
I also suspect a lot of them don't know about other alternatives for extra or other credits. A lot of schools will let you take intro university courses for credit, or arrange for you to job shadow someone for credit, but I'll bet a lot of students don't know about this.
In the (probably better) days of 'O' & 'A' level GCE (no 's') there were "Computer Science" O & A level qualifications. The problem then was that there were very few teachers qualified to teach the subject. The large school I went to (1700 pupils) in the 70's did not have a CS teacher. Then, just when computing became a universally needed skill, they started "teaching" pupils to use MS products (and ONLY MS products - Of course MS didn't apply any pressure or "bribe" any civil servants or their departments or any of their usual tactics), despite FLOSS being free & customisable for educational purposes. They were just providing Office fodder. No "Hello,World" even. In the current govt there are one or two MPs who run IT firms & do "get it" , plus massive pressure from (non-bureaucrat) industry to produce one or two school leavers who can do more than type a fucking business letter in Word, so hopefully the tide is turning.
Wonder how much money they've spunked on shitbag MS licences - millions upon millions of taxpayer pounds probably.
Any coded code will have to be approved by the ministry of information ofcourse ... we can't have those dissidents spreading their social networking all over the place
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
After years of us complaining that the schools only teach Word, Excel & Publisher and a bit of WYSIWYG Webdesign. They have now announced they will be teaching the Cisco CCNA as part of the ICT curriculum.
Good job really as here in the UK we will be able to set up lots of little install service business to support the US IT Companies that now monopolise the industry. Anyone wanting to learn to code should learn to speak an eastern european language or Chinese as this is where all the coding is getting done call me a cynic but hey 30yrs experience in IT industry and I call it as I see it.
NB: I learnt to programme Fortran, C and Pascal in my first year at Uni and I was doing Engineering...