[Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?

[Bill Kerr]

hi kevork,

appreciate the effort you have gone to with your comprehensive list and
analysis

I went through your list and think it can be abbreviated to three main
things:

   1. tertiary admission (IT deemed to be less important than other
   subjects)
   2. employment issues (gone to india, false perception or boring jobs)
   3. trivial or boring or irrelevant or integrated from either student
   or school perspective either due to school policies (not compulsory,
   integration) or lack of teacher skill

I've taken out the "fun" item because at the moment that's just being
suggested as a possible solution to the problem I think (ie. introduce game
maker to senior school), it's not there yet in Victoria - don't think it
will solve the problems anyway based on my own experience in one school in
SA

Teachers don't have much control over items (1) and (2). We might argue with
the Uni stakeholders but they have more say. We might argue that there
really are good jobs out there but for some reason its not getting through.
By focusing on (1) and (2) there might be some impact on the rate of decline
but it's not going to stop the decline. Vocational pathways will continue to
be offered in senior school irregardless. It's important but I see it as a
side issue to the more important educational issues

Item 3 is a can of worms partly because as a society we haven't yet worked
out what computers are really good for. It's an all purpose machine that can
emulate lots of other machines but what are they really good for?

eg. the printing press was invented in 1450 but it took a generation before
new forms of printing became popular - the older generation had to die out.
eg. the first scientific illustrations didn't appear in books until 1484
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-did-printing-press-change-and-how.html

I would argue that there are unique and powerful educational purposes for
computers - eg. dynamically representing the exponential spread of an
epidemic, teaching calculus through vectors

I seem to be coming to a position that stand-alone IT might have limited
impact in education. But nevertheless, the computer still is a vitally
important, amazing and powerful machine that all learners ought to be
invited to explore more deeply - for its powerful functionality, not just
game playing, web surfing or the latest application

It's more like this
- the printing press led to the book which led to literature which led to
English literature
- the computer allows for the dynamic representation of systems which leads
to what new subjects (?) or what extensions of existing subjects such as
physics etc.?

I think mark guzdial is on the right path here: start with a rich concept
from the wider world of science or economics, for example, and then use
computers, including programming, to enrich the study of that domain
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/08/mark-guzdial-on-computing-education.html

I see this sort of approach as more productive and more hopeful in the
longer term

cheers,
-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/



On 9/25/07, Kevork Krozian <kevork at edulists.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> It is rather surreal following this thread. Let me explain why.
>
> 1. Multimedia Victoria through the office of the State Minister of
> Multimedia has just spent $500,000 in a 12 stop travelling roadshow around
> Victoria trying to increase IT enrolments to fill the skill shortage out
> in
> industry.
> 2. Box Hill Institute repeatedly falls short when requested to supply IT
> graduates to Google, Telstra and others. For that reason they have held
> career information sessions to attract more students. The information
> sessions have been presented by industry employers.If anyone wants their
> names and email addresses I can find them and pass them on.
>
> It seems we are not sure what the causes are to our problem of declining
> student numbers. The theories fall along the following categories:
>
> 1. It is not rigorous enough. It is scaled down and therefore does not
> appeal to those who want a good ENTER score.
> 2. It has been continuously eroded to the point tertiary courses prefer
> students to NOT have completed a diluted IT course with programming taught
> using outdated programming paradigms with monolithic 3G programmming more
> in
> keeping with the late 80s and 90s. The IT courses have been tailored to
> suit
> the teachers available to teach them rather than the demands of industry.
> 3. IT in secondary schools is entirely disjointed from Year 13 at tertiay
> level unlike the much better links that existed with the old Computer
> Science at senior secondary level in the late 80s and unlike the better
> links that exist between Physics and Chemistry between Yr 12 and 13 as
> claimed in an earlier email by a tertiary level IT lecturer.
> 4. It is too much/not enough FUN.
> 5. It is too theoretical/business management based with never ending
> systems analysis
> 6. It is/isn't practical enough.
> 7. It is not being selected because there have been declining numbers of
> jobs since the tech wreck of 2000. That was 8 years ago.
> 8. All the jobs have gone to India so there is no point chasing an IT
> career.
> 9. IT is not a prerequisite for a job since you don't even need it to do
> IT
> at Uni or TAFE. So why take it if you don't need it ? You can take it
> later
> if you decide to follow an IT career.
> 10. The teacher doesn't know anything/enough about IT and how to fix
> computers or how to set up a network so the students think they know more
> than the teacher so they can't possible learn from him/her.
> 11. Students feel they know it all because they can download music, burn
> DVDs, edit home movies, update their geocities or myspace personal web
> area,
> use ipods, etc etc. What good would it do to take IT at senior level when
> they know it all ?
> 12. IT is not compulsory at junior level so students do not see a link
> between what they have done with ICT across the curriculum and a
> specialist
> senior IT class.
>
> No doubt you can add to this list. What is curious is that during the
> careers seminars at Box Hill , industry people lined up a number of myths
> such as job numbers have declined and systematically "busted" each one of
> them in so far as the industry trends and employment availability. To be
> fair, their brief was more on encouraging students to select IT at
> tertiary
> and TAFE levels rather than any dicussion about IT at senior secondary
> level.
> To also be fair an enormous amount of work has gone in at the local level
> to make IT related courses more accessible to secondary students. Many
> schools have tried to make IT at secondary level more "work ready" in its
> delivery. For example, many schools teach :
>
> 1. the VET Multimedia Certificate III
> 2. the VET IT Certificate III
> 3. Aries
> 4. Cisco CCNA and even the first semester of Cisco CCNP.
>
> Despite this huge effort with up to 5 senior IT and IT related classes at
> my school ( IT apps, IT Software Dev., VET multimedia Cert III, VET IT
> Cert
> III, Cisco CCNA ) , I have had less than 12 students at Year 11 level ,
> enrolled across these subjects for next year.
>
> Whilst there are some valid reasons why students have turned off IT (
> listed
> above ), I still feel that we have missed something obvious in the
> evolution
> of our subject so that it has become less attractive. Part of it has been
> the hijacking of ICT across the curriculum to relegate IT to a doormat (
> service ) for other subject areas.The idea of ICT across the curriculum
> has
> as much merit as English or Maths across the curriculum.
> I am not sure where the answer(s) lies but maybe we need to survey the
> customers more closely to establish what their reasons are in order to
> fine
> tune our efforts.
>
> Yours in despair
>
> Kevork Krozian
> Edulists Creator and Administrator
> www.edulists.com.au
> kevork at edulists.com.au
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Russell Edwards" <edwards.russell.t at edumail.vic.gov.au>
> To: "Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List"
> <itapps at edulists.com.au>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 8:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?
>
>
> >
> > On 24/09/2007, at 7:00 PM, Cameron Bell wrote:
> >
> >> Unfortunately the current assessment and VTAC admissions scheme  means
> >> that students tend to take a strategic approach to subject  selection.
> >> The ENTER score is the goal. While a few students have a  clear pathway
> >> mapped out and will chose subjects based on interest,  many aim to
> >> maximise the ENTER score, then see what courses they  qualify for
> (often
> >> making monumental errors of judgement as  evidenced by the drop-out
> rate
> >> in first year uni). Why would a  student take VCE IT if they felt they
> >> could get a better score by  taking say, history. There is nothing
> about
> >> having VCE IT as a pre- requisite for ICT courses at the Uni's - they
> >> want English and  Maths Methods. (Does that say anything about the VCE
> >> courses or is  it that they want to make it as easy as possible to
> >> qualify?)  Students could well end up in well paying careers in IT
> >> without  taking it in Yr 11 or 12.
> >
> > Well, that has been true for a long time. When I did my VCE in  1992/3,
> we
> > certainly had maximising our tertiary entrance score as  the primary
> goal.
> > Like all my computer geek friends, I actively  avoided choosing VCE IT
> > because it was boring!!  I then went on to do  an hons degree in comp
> sci,
> > another degree after that, and work for  several years in science with
> > strong software development component.  To a 16-year-old who's been
> coding
> > for half his or her life, spending  a year looking at application
> software
> > and business management jargon  looks like a big and boring step
> > backwards.
> >
> > My impression is that the VCE IT subjects (apart from Software Dev? I
> > have no experience of that) are not designed with the IT enthusiast
> > (=future IT professional) in mind. Instead they are designed to give  a
> > grounding in IT to people who will end up working in other areas.   This
> > is the type of grounding that will help people work in  environments
> that
> > use ICT (i.e. just about everywhere, these days).   It's not nearly deep
> > enough to provide any significant level of  preparation for an ICT
> career,
> > and in fact I'd go so far as to say  that anyone who didn't find it
> boring
> > due to its simplicity is very  likely, if they enroll in a uni IT
> course,
> > to end up in the drop-out  group you mention unless they are willing to
> > work very hard at it.
> >
> > hehe, I remember making a similar point last week on the yr7-10it  list.
> > Must be navel-gazing season!!
> >
> > So we may as well forget about "needing it" as a reason for
> choosing  VCE
> > IT. If we don't want it to go, it has to be made more
> interesting  and/or
> > easier.
> >
> > Of course, the other option that should always be dispassionately
> > considered, even though it's obviously uncomfortable for IT
> teachers,  is
> > that possibly it's fading as a VCE-level subject for good reason.
> >
> > Russell
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
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