[Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links

[Timmer-Arends]

I have to say that this discussion is heading to Comp Sci circa 1990 (which
is not necessarily a bad thing) but it seems to me that a couple of 
questions need  to be answered first:
1. what do we want students to get out of a technically-oriented Y12 IT 
course?
2. is the course primarily intended to prepare students for teritary, work, 
or both?

Regards
Robert T-A


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Bird" <sb at csse.unimelb.edu.au>
To: "Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List"
<sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:41 AM
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links


> [Adrian -- thanks for picking a more appropriate subject line now that
> discussion has moved away from data flow diagrams.]
>
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 7:28 PM, andrew barry <jagguy999 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I prefer to just teach an IT subject which is just programming and some
>> programming design eg psuedo code.
>
> I agree.  Students should learn how to walk before learning how to
> run, i.e. they should be competent with "programming in-the-small"
> before they spend much time on "programming in-the-large" (incl SDLC).
>
>> Including so much theory doesn't get any student excited about learning
>> IT
>> at Uni. After all we are trying to promote IT beyond yr12 are we not? Are
>> we
>> not trying to get more people to do it?
>
> I agree with Adrian that rigour is important, and this cuts across
> analysis, design, implementation, documentation, etc.  The SDLC is one
> source of theory but I question its suitability at this level.  It's
> intended for software engineering projects where you have to manage
> whole teams of developers, client relationships, project deliverables,
> etc.  When students aren't already experienced at small-scale
> programming the emphasis often falls on a rather heavy document
> process, which has to be one of the least exciting aspects of software
> development.
>
> Another issue I have with the emphasis on SDLC as a major source of
> theoretical content is that it focusses too much on the software
> development process.  Of course that's entirely appropriate given the
> title of the subject, but there's some other areas of computing theory
> that would be useful and accessible at this level, including
> algorithmic problem solving and the limits of computing.  Here's a
> couple of introductory books that cover these topics in a
> non-mathematical yet rigorous and intellectually stimulating way:
>
> Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing (3rd Ed, David Harel, Addison
> Wesley, 2004)
>
> Computers Ltd: What They Really Can't Do (David Harel, Oxford
> University Press, 2000)
>
> -Steven Bird
> http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~sb/
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