[Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?
Kevork Krozian
kevork at edulists.com.au
Wed Sep 26 23:03:01 EST 2007
Hi Bill,
I value your time,global perspective. I also value your well researched extensive knowledge base from which you offer the latest research and thinking. I know I speak for many when I say you are an asset on these lists. I am not sure we disagree on anything - only how to rehabilitate IT and even then I am not sure anyone has the only right answer; hence the thread. Maybe even rehabilitation may be too late/not feasible.
I am wondering if stand alone IT will decline all the way up to the tertiary levels if the trend continues.
Consider the drop from 7856 in IT Apps in 2004 to 4804 in 2007 and the translation is about a 40% drop in 3 years. This for a subject that was the 3rd most popular in Victoria only about 10 years ago. Even Software Development which enjoyed reasonably stable numbers around 3000 has had similar drops if I am not mistaken.
Has any subject ever seen that sort of shakeout ? ( Apologies if my approximations are incorrect - I don't have a copy of the exact numbers and dates )
I accept your very powerful arguments regarding the use of computers. Most of my degree was based on these types of applications from numerical computations such as how functions are approximated using computers to simulation of atomic and molecular behaviour using computer programming. I actually ran into an ex Chemistry lecturer who was incidentally quoting an American chemist who wrote the book " How to Use Excel in Analytical Chemistry and in General Scientific Data Analysis". As I have been earmarked to return to teaching senior Chemistry after an 18 year absence maybe this book will come in handy ....:)) Forgive my digression.
Are you suggesting the stand alone senior IT will also disappear as computers are absorbed into other areas ?
If so how will the current skill set needed by IT professionals be ever attained ?
I will add one more observation and invite comment.
Who knows of any other senior subject ( apart from IT ) for which teachers are wheeled in front of classes without the requisite minimum 2 years of University training in that subject ?
Does anyone imagine a self taught Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Accounting, History, Economics teacher taking a year 11 to say nothing of a year 12 class ? Why have we/do we allow it in IT ?
Yours in continuing despair
Kevork Krozian
Edulists Creator and Administrator
www.edulists.com.au
kevork at edulists.com.au
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Kerr
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 5:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?
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
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe
> IT Applications Mailing List kindly supported by
> http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.auvce/studies/infotech/itapplications3-4.html -
> Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and
> http://www.vitta.org.au - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers
> Association Inc
>
_______________________________________________
http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe
IT Applications Mailing List kindly supported by
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.auvce/studies/infotech/itapplications3-4.html - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and
http://www.vitta.org.au - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc
_______________________________________________
http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe
IT Applications Mailing List kindly supported by
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.auvce/studies/infotech/infotechindex.html - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and
http://www.vitta.org.au - VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/itapps/attachments/20070926/aca4a094/attachment-0001.html
More information about the itapps
mailing list