[Year 12 IT Apps] comment about Informatics

[Mark]

Hi Andrew. You have put your finger on the crux of my ambivalence about
Informatics. That might sound rude. Apologies.

IPM/ITA has traditionally been a subject that is approachable for the
student with no real IT skills or IT career ambitions.
Informatics seems to be trying to make ITA into a subject with a Military
Haircut and a Serious Academic Attitude.

My fear is that traditional ITA students would not likely look kindly upon
the concept of Informatics when ticking the boxes on their Year 12 course
selection forms.
The name might arouse curiosity in stronger students, and put off the
casual VCE shopper who is already tending to go for Media.
"Informatics" is not familiar and easy to put on a peg.

I admit the Informatics course will be exciting and challenging - for
stronger students. The sort of student who would opt for SD. In fact, I
will predict a higher number of students doing Informatics *and* SD in
future.

Our average ITA punter - in my opinion - will look at Informatics and
shudder, wince and say, "Ewww. What's that? No websites? I like doing
websites." and keep walking past the VCE IT display during VCE Information
Night. Informatics will not attract them.

I hope to be proved wrong.

Mark


On 13 May 2014 10:05, Andrew Shortell <shortell at get2me.net> wrote:

> Hi Mark
>
> It would also be good if you reminded people who are responding to put in
> their response that they should be agitating for a subject that just
> teaches ordinary office skills for ordinary office jobs.
>
> The sort of subject that you and I might call Business computing or
> business office skills ( a bit like the old shorthand courses and typing
> courses of yesteryear) and would be run as  VET subject because it is only
> about developing some competency in doing things like word processing and
> spreadsheets and low end web pages. No intellectual challenges and no
> interest in encouraging further study in computing, just something to give
> them some basic skills as per your other post.
>
> For the next few years we will still need some people who can do this
> before we finish outsourcing all those low end monotonous tedious mind
> numbingly repetitive tautological doubling up jobs to the people who are
> willing to work hard and challenge them selves in some of the third world
> developing countries.
> As the career teachers keep telling our students, they will have a number
> of careers in their lives and the most important thing that they can do to
> help themselves is to learn how to learn new skills. Our job surely is to
> help them to develop intellectually so that they can improve themselves.
>
> Off my soap box and back to the exciting NAPLAN
>
> and then off to teach seniors how to think about computing. Luckily I
> don't have to teach office skills.
>
> Andrew
>
>    Andrew Shortell
> Educator
> CRC Melton
> shortell at get2me.net (This List)
> @acsbear8 (twitter)
>
>
>>
Mark Kelly
mark AT vceit DOT com
http://vceit.com

*Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease - Bill Maher *
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/itapps/attachments/20140513/5a07dee1/attachment.html