[Year 12 IPM] New Yr10IT Course - Construct-ion-ivist Approach

[Robert Hind]

Re year 10 plus:

I too am a fan of teaching students to use HTML directly.  Mainly because I believe that the students should know what is going on "behind the scenes" before they launch into a wysiwyg program such as Dreamweaver. Non-standards-compliant programs such as Front Page should be relegated to the lowest rank, even if they are easy to use and readily available.

CSS, HTML, JavaScript: all great and I think that our IT students should be following this path rather than even Dreamweaver because part of their IT education is learning how things work rather than just being able to "do it".

But so many of the students are after the "quick fix". What do they want?" "Results."  "When do they want them?" "Now." - or preferably last week. They have chosen to study IT and it should be made clear to them that we are not simply following the ICT path, but rather showing them how things work.

Robert Hind
Ashwood College
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bill Kerr 
  To: Year 12 Information Technology Processing and Management Teachers'Mailing List 
  Cc: List Yr7-10it 
  Sent: Sunday, July 03, 2005 1:03 PM
  Subject: Re: [Year 12 IPM] New Yr10IT Course - Construct-ion-ivist Approach


  hi keith,

  Thanks for sharing your plan. 

  Task 10 - Website

  I'm a big fan of *not* using FrontPage because it is not standards compliant, for example, the pages may not appear correctly in popular alternative browsers such as Firefox.

  That's a pragmatic issue but the whole issue of web standards is an important issue in its own right IMHO. 

  One approach (the FrontPage approach) is to produce a webpage as quickly and easily as possible. 

  The other approach is to follow the modern, forward looking path of clean separation of structure (HTML), style (CSS) and behaviour (javascript) which will make webpages look better in a variety of browsers, last into the future (as browsers improve CSS2, CSS3), incorporate features such as disability access which ought to be of importance to teachers, etc.

  I'm also a big fan of teaching raw HTML markup directly but that's a separate issue. Dreamweaver, for example, is standards compliant and so is a perfectly acceptable alternative to Frontpage. 

  -- 
  Bill Kerr
  http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
  http://intranet.woodvillehs.sa.edu.au/kerrbi/index.htm


  On 6/29/05, Keith Richardson <keithcr at fastmail.fm> wrote:
    I have been impressed by the various approaches to ITC discussed
    recently on these lists, and so decided to create an experimental
    learning setting for my Year10IT class for Semester 2. I have played
    with various forms of scenario-based integrative units before, as I 
    guess we all have, but decided to go all out with this one, utilizing
    full-immersion lasting a full semester.
    My kids seem to work best in situations where they are involved in the
    content, where there are clearly defined expectations, yet where there 
    is also 'room-to-move'. I have built each of these elements into the
    course.
    I would like to eventually move towards a Moodle style of course
    delivery, but at this point in time the learning curve (for me) is 
    toweringly steep, so have decided to be more conventional and during the
    semester in my own time try adapting it across to Moodle. We will see...
    Please feel free to modify and adapt in any which way (all I ask is that 
    credit be given for original authorship). It should be easy to change
    the cultural setting to suit your kids, and to adjust the various
    software and tasks to suit what you prefer to do.
    My whole thesis is that ICT and associated software programs should be 
    there to serve other purposes. There will be times when it is essential
    to pause from the theme and teach just software but just sufficient to
    put them onto the right track with correct procedures and the discipline 
    of organized logic particularly in the field of file management.
    As an aside I recommend taking a look at the Florida Gulf Coast
    University tutorials for Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Access, as well as
    Wikipaedia for definitions and extended explanations. 
    Attached please find a copy of the course.
    I would be very interested in and appreciative of critical feedback
    please.
    Regards, Keith Richardson
    Keith Richardson
    Leibler Yavneh College
    Elsternwick Ph (03)9528 4911 
    keithcr at fastmail.fm

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