[Year 12 IT Apps] A research question...

[Garth, Lucas A]

Hi
I agree Ken - how an occupation is portrayed is very important.

Another great example of an industry changing how it looks is Certified Practicing Accountants.   They show their occupation as one that encourages travel, seeing the world and working in industries that are socially appealing (such as sporting teams or brand name corporations).  Alex Malley is on TV interviewing lots of other famous individuals and it makes the occupation change from being all about overtime, numbers and saving a person $8 in tax to one that is "aspirational".

Many young people when I did IT were thinking it was the industry of the future (I went through VCE in the dot.com boom in late 90s).  Now young people think there are no jobs because they are "all" being outsourced to China/India/Malaysia/(insert any other country here).

While future job prospects IS a legitimate concern for people entering the IT industry, particularly in large multi-national companies, there are still many more people employed in IT (and trained locally) than there were in the 90s and there will be ever more into the future.  Outsourcing is mainly completed in areas where tasks are repetitive, so our teaching needs to reflect that we need people who can use IT to create flexible solutions.

The jobs may look a  little different (i.e. business analysis, data mining, more design and conceptual work will probably prevail long-term) but there will always be a need in a business for someone who can interpret data and give the business owner the information that they so desperately need.

I teach my students to have another real strong skill (or subject that they are good at or interested in), and to use IT to leverage that skill.   If they are great at business, go into business and use your IT skills to be the IT expert in your business field.  If your love is sports, user your IT skills like Champion Data to better analyse the state of game play.   It's here where IT skills we teach at school are crucial for not just future employment but future enjoyable employment.  Don't necessarily think of IT jobs in IT firms - there are only a small amount of jobs available at the Microsoft/Google businesses.

So - what's needed at our level is to show the real state of play in IT - there are many jobs, but these jobs do not rely on a uni degree for entrance score, but candidates showing a portfolio of work - i.e. interest from industry is not so much what you've studied and more what you can do with what you've studied.

My more than 2c
LG

Ken Price wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/upshot/making-computer-science-more-inviting-a-look-at-what-works.html

Might be interesting to collate some of these initiatives. I sense a huge amount of replication, but at the same time the problem remains.

As anecdata, the correlation between TV programs/films  and student career aspirations is worth a look. Popular TV show about lawyers -> increase in student interest in a career which previously was seen as incredibly boring. The CSI series resulted in increases in students wanting to do forensic science ( and I even had one complain that their study required them to "do all this legal stuff" - apparently the  nature of forensic science had never occurred to them). This phenomenon first came to my attention when a very young Kylie Minogue played a female mechanic in a well-known TV program and resulted in a spike in women training as mechanics, and has been repeated over and over again.

But how is computing portrayed in the media? In most cases, as a nerdy, isolated profession where social interaction is shunned. Maybe that portrayal is changing but it is one of many factors acting against the computing industry/profession.

While I'm about it, the Australian Computer Society has a set of YT videos about

Women in IT
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8BUtM6njqLuWFp7jdTgpJMZadK3PP0sf
and
Careers in IT
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVUShuGdUYl4eQCRQG7H7zOLxBoZf5e2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGCrKCxj-kQ&list=PLVUShuGdUYl4rnk0ZdkKU2VW8rp9rg_XF
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL42BE27FF3884ADAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi9azHqU9RY&list=PLE4F9B3EE57D97A10

These are Australian videos and the content is reasonably current. Some of them might be useful at careers evenings, enrolment day, or for your own classes. They might give some students a reason or idea about the value of studying computing.



On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:09 PM, Tracey Hubert <traceyhubert at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am a pre-service IT teacher and long-time lurker. I am working on an 
> assessment investigating issues and debates around the implementation 
> of the (proposed) Digital Technologies curriculum and the implications 
> for schools and teachers. In the Donnely and Whiltsire review, they 
> propose that IT remain a general capability and the standalone subject 
> be scrapped or made optional. One of the arguments is there are not 
> enough suitably qualified teachers and that it can be taught across 
> the disciplines. They obviously miss the point that ITC != computational thinking.
>
> I am curious to hear what practicing IT teachers think about this 
> assertion. I went to a school tour on Friday and was surprised to 
> learn they didn't offer IT as a subject at all, not even in VCE. No 
> electives in Year 9. Nothing. I had a look at the overall statistics 
> for VCE IT apps and VCE Software Development and saw enrolments are 
> significantly down from their 2000?2001 peak. During the online PD for 
> the new VCE subjects, Paula Christophersen mentioned they have 
> increased this year by 10%, but it still seems quite low given the 
> ubiquity of tech and the push for STEM subjects in general.
>
> I was wondering if anyone has any insight as to why they think the 
> numbers have dropped in they way they have. It can't only be explained 
> by the scaling down, can it?
>
> TIA
> Tracey
>
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>



--
--
Dr Ken Price MACS CP ACCE Professional Associate.
President, TASITE http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au
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