[Yr7-10it] Scratch, Gamemaker, VB.net, Python, PHP and MySQL - Programming for all levels

[ken price]

The enrolment issue is interesting when one compares it with the enrolments
in other areas.

Enrolments in legal studies increase as TV shows portray law as exciting and
cool, rather than the deadly boring area it is for most lawyers

Enrolments in veterinary science increase as TV shows Vets as cool people
rather than a profession that deals with dying dogs and sick horses in
manure-laden environments.

Enrolments and interest in forensic science increase when - guess what, TV
portrays dealing with dead people as cool. (one of my daughter's friends was
most upset that her forensic course involved law - then she looked up the
definition of forensic and was surprised, as she had formed her entire
perception of the area from TV programs -this is an intelligent tertiary
student)

And enrolments in IT subjects are pretty closely aligned with the complete
absence of positive role models in the popular media, especially for girls.

Kids seek career and future advice from the media, their peers and their
parents (schools tend to run well down the list). The media shows nothing,
their peers are equally uninformed, and parents often don't know what a
computing career involves.

The problem is that the industry has no visible profile.

As an exercise, ask your kids to name the three main IT businesses in your
area.  Whenever I've done it, the appliance retailer Harvey Norman is one of
the most-named "IT businesses". Why? Because many kids see IT in terms of
selling computer hardware. And why would they think differently?

kp


On 9/19/07, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote many things including:
>
>
> > Reply:
> > I did write about the Enrolment issue on another thread but no one
> > responded - I think for starters we must develop a good analysis of why
> > enrolments are declining, without understanding the problem there won't be a
> > good solution. eg. I don't like approach of (only) saying "game maker is
> > motivating, that might fix the problem"
> >
> > Here's the main bit:
> > Mark Guzdial (tertiary college, Georgia Tech, USA) has an analysis on
> > his blog which goes:
> >
> > 1) The main reason for declining enrollments are economic, the dot com
> > crash. Students are prepared to put up with a lot if they are going to make
> > a lot of $$ at the end of the road. But computer science is now tarnished
> > with respect to that.
> >
> > This little stat is interesting - "more high school students now take
> > the Latin AP exam than the Computer Science AP exam" :-)
> >
> > 2) The secondary reason is that computing courses are seen as boring but
> > hard. ie. computing is seen as a dry data processing  sort of thing (boring)
> > and the programming side of that is seen as hard. From Mark's perspective
> > and mine things can be done at this level but remember this is the secondary
> > reason, not the primary
> >
> > Mark sees the declining enrollment crisis as an opportunity for
> > curriculum reform and they are developing new courses at Georgia Tech
> > along those lines. I wrote a blog recently containing lots of links to
> > mark's blog including links to how they are redesigning their courses. I
> > think the important point here is that they are looking at major integrated
> > course redesign not just adding something that is "fun" to what is already
> > there.
> >
> > cheers,
> > - Bill
> >
>
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