Posts by Cyberneticist 7 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jul 2011
I've been working on a project that is a bit similar to "Sets" for quite a while now! The client isn't quite ready for public viewing yet, but you can see the status of it all at http://www.netelligence.co.uk/ClientRoadmap.aspx - It's functional, and in fact I'm using a browser tab in it right now to write this comment!
Much more than Excel Macro Hacking - I took a group of 8 year olds through C# using Visual Studio 2010 to build a character that jumped around the screen. We did the basics - variables, conditional statements and loops designed via a flowchart. You can explain types via "Lockers", physical objects they understand (Lockers of different sizes store different types of information) - it all boils down to how well the teacher can explain their craft.
I teach A-Level ICT alongside BTEC computing (to different groups of students) - A-Level ICT has no relevance at all in learning to become a computing professional. It doesn't involve programming, and is more about "Problem solving in the Digital World" and identifying what types of network existed before we moved on to our bus TCP/IP Ethernet connections. I cannot really see the point of offering A-Level ICT (I know, the irony!) and yet my BTEC computing students go on to university and find that everything they learn in their first year they have already covered as a matter of course.
Students do GCSE ICT / DIDA and learn about how to use computers. They do A-Level ICT expecting the same, and are short-changed with a hodge-podge of some technical but mostly flowery talk surrounding computers and their place in society, that has no genuine use in the real world. Others do BTEC computing and are shocked to find a world of maths, binary, coding and network management, when they just wanted to format some letters.
Teach ICT right at a lower level - show people what the technical looks like, rather than just how to use office. You would end up with a lot less confused students taking IT courses because they enjoy playing on facebook.
While that is true, even with college students on IT courses, teaching students the basics through something like Scratch from MIT (http://scratch.mit.edu/) can get them to grasp seemingly complex concepts such as Event Driven coding without too much pain. I've manage to teach 5 year olds how to build simple programs through scratch, then be able to translate that into simple flowcharts for a design. It isn't much of a jump, once the initial concept is grasped, to start learning the grammar that makes up a programming language and creating simple programs.
The General Teaching Council stats miss out a huge sector of teachers - College Lecturers. I am a College Lecturer with a Cybernetics and Computer Science Degree, and was a technical architect building software worth millions of pounds before changing careers. I teach A-Level ICT and BTEC qualifications, and know from my own experience that teachers in colleges have to have a qualification in the subject they are teaching, and / or a high level of experience.
I whole-heartedly agree with the initiative, and see a good way of going forward would be for schools to utilise this resource in our colleges and other Higher Education establishments - make links with the local colleges and universities and get fully qualified teachers with high levels of real-world experience helping younger students to achieve their potential.
... there was also The Quickshot supervision (Try a google image search) - missing, but if he wants to buy one from me I still have mine...!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=879&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=quickshot+supervision&oq=quickshot+supervision&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1671l4354l0l4768l12l11l1l0l0l2l207l1409l1.8.1l10
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