[Year 12 Its] Improving the status of VCE IT subjects

[Frank Merlino]

Thanks Con,
Maybe the "minister" needs to know that some of us do want to focus on the "geeky" things...if she cannot, or finds it to difficult, that's her problem.

Regards,
Frank


-----Original Message-----
From: is-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:is-bounces at edulists.com.au]On
Behalf Of Con Zymaris
Sent: Monday, 10 July 2006 9:33 AM
To: Year 12 Information Technology Systems Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 Its] Improving the status of VCE IT subjects


On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 06:55:28PM +1000, Jack Matthews wrote:
> Hi everyone
> 
> I am a relatively new teacher and am rather disappointed in the current VCE 
> IT subjects, in particular the content taught in Information System.
> 
> In my opinion there need to be a new subject titled something like 
> ?Computing fundamentals?.
> 
> I have found that there are many students that want to learn the technical 
> aspects of computers,  including Programming, Binary computation, circuits, 
> SQL, Network communication (packets), Hexadecimal, octal, 
> encryption/sorting algorithms, general problem solving etc.
> 
> Not only would these be good offering for students and future university 
> courses; It would also be relatively easy to examine.
> 
> In my opinion, IT studies in general are dumbed down which is the reason 
> students don?t even need IT at year 12 to enter a IT course at university.
> 
> It is generally considered by teachers and students alike to be an easy 
> bludge subject.  And yes, it is!!  Having worked as a programmer in 
> industry, this really annoys me, as I know I have worked tiresly on a 
> programming problem for days.
> 
> A simple example exam question might be: Displaying the hex output of a 
> packet sniffer and an ASCII chart, then get the students to interpret the 
> protocol used, information sent etc.  A more mathematical approach needs to 
> be taken.  ?Correct / Incorrect?, none of this interpretive stuff that 
> seems to be continuously presenting itself in IT Systems exams.
> 
> I know personally that I have many students that are capable of completing 
> such a course.  I would love to see an IT course that is comparable in 
> difficulty to Physics, in other words ?challenging?!
> 
> What do others think?

;-)

You're fighting an uphill battle. 

Let me tell you what our Minister for ICT said at the recent VicIT
drinks and nibblies evening at the museum. Marsha's words are, and I
paraphrase, we don't want to focus on the geeky and the techy, we have
cheap offshore labor to do the actual tech grunt work, why would we want
to do hard-core tech stuff here, like programming?

If that's the direction being set by the person at the top, fat chance 
you have of making a difference ;-)

The mealy-mouthed management consultants have taken over the asylum.

All the best in your efforts.

Cheers,

Con Zymaris

- CEO, Cybersource Pty. Ltd.
- Director, Open Source Industry Australia, Limited.
- Convenor, Open Source Victoria (A Government-funded industry cluster.)

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
Web: http://www.cyber.com.au/  Phone: 03 9621 2377   Fax: 03 9621 2477


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