[Year 12 Its] Re: [Yr11 Information Technology] ProgrammingAwards2006: PD Registrations

[gavin at vitta.org.au]

Hi Con,

VITTA is certainly keen to support programming competitions in other
languages - if you find us a company who is as willing to provide
financial, software, and other support as Microsoft have been for a
competition dealing with PHP, C, Python or Perl, then please let me know.

While certainly not the only language used in secondary schools, Visual
Basic is certainly a prominent one as it is easy to learn and can be
utilised in quite powerful ways.

As Adrian has said, I think we should all be supportive of any project
which attempts to foster an interest in ICT (and not only does that, but
rewards excelling students quite generously).

Regards,

Gavin Ballard
Project Officer
VITTA

> On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 11:02:44AM +1000, Adrian Janson wrote:
>> Hi everyone!
>>
>> I think we should be applauding any initiative in which we deliver
>> technology to students or give them learning opportunities.   Please do
>> not
>> post negative comments - we are all working to promote IT and career
>> pathways, not criticize others for doing so.
>
> Don't like dissent or debate, huh Adrian?
>
> Sorry, I don't do 'lying down' very well. :-)
>
> It's not enought that the Victorian Department of Education does
> single-sourcing deals with Microsoft, excluding other suppliers, for
> most of the software that students are trained in.
>
> It also only pushes Microsoft-only programming competitions, reducing the
> likelihood that students can comfortably learn other languages/platforms.
>
> If you don't think this establishes a monopolist mindset amongst your
> students, and that this monopolist mindset has a substantially
> negative pedagogical impact, then I can see I have some education of my
> own to do here.
>
> 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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