[Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?
Cameron Bell
bell.cameron.p at edumail.vic.gov.au
Wed Sep 26 17:45:59 EST 2007
Well put Bill. I for one concur. We have had a rather rigorous
discussion about stand alone IT classes etc etc previously so I don't
want to rehash old arguments.
Personally, I cannot see how anyone can be teaching modern Science
without instant access to computers in this day and age. I would very
much like my science students to be programming some more advanced
solutions other than spreadsheet analysis, but while they are filling
the labs learning "Office" and wysiwyg web-page creation then I can't
see it advancing much. I'd be pretty good if students could get credit
for demonstrating an understanding of the IT concepts covered in Apps
within another subject. Trouble is that whereas I would be able to
manage, teach and assess it, those that aren't IT qualified couldn't. I
look forward to the day my VCE Physics kids had the time to do a really
detailed analysis or simulation of their own creation of a physics
concept and have those skills and achievements recognised. But we have
to "cover the study design" and "do the exams"..... :-(
If I leave teaching it won't be because of stress or pay - it'll be
because it is so much "more of the same" in the later years. Years that
could be so much more than read the book, do the prac, do the exam, get
your ENTER, bye!
Cameron
Bill Kerr wrote:
> 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
> <mailto: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 <http://www.edulists.com.au>
> kevork at edulists.com.au <mailto:kevork at edulists.com.au>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Russell Edwards" <edwards.russell.t at edumail.vic.gov.au
> <mailto:edwards.russell.t at edumail.vic.gov.au>>
> To: "Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List"
> <itapps at edulists.com.au <mailto: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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