There’s an interesting blog, with comments, on the Guardian site, which started last Wednesday. This kicked off with a comment about a comment made by Bill Thompson on the BBC site saying that kids need to understand about security risks and schools should teach this understanding. What followed included some discussion about the curriculum meaning of ‘ICT’, ‘computing’ and ‘computer use’.
Based on my observations as a father of too many kids, schools generally teach the use of computers. Sure, there’s a little bit of understanding about how they work, but generally what my kids learn in ICT is some pretty boring stuff about Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint etc. One of the commentators on the blog observed that this stuff is better taught as part of business studies etc and another hammered home this point by talking about embedding ICT across the curriculum.
For ICT in the sense of ‘computer use’ this seems absolutely right to me – the best place to learn to write a letter is in an English class and the best place to learn about spreadsheets might be in a science class, to plot results from an experiment.
Teaching computing seems to be a different area but one that might engage an awful lot of kids, particularly boys, if teachers were allowed to do it. Currently, they seem trapped behind the curriculum/test imperative of teaching computer use. I remember being asked by the Head of ICT at a City Technology College what she should do about security – she had a problem in that her pupils hacked their way around all the network security that they put in place. When I told her that I thought this was fantastic and suggested that the kids offer a service to local businesses to test their security, she thought I was mad.
More recently, at one of my kids’ schools, the network manager has blocked googleapps because the kids had worked out how to embed games in webpages they were creating: online games are banned so they banned googleapps. It seems to me that these kids should have been applauded and engaged to teach some of the teachers how to do the same thing! Meanwhile, the ICT teachers are stuck delivering a syllabus that has all the inspiration and creativity of a b-standard Victorian novel. What hope is there?
1 response so far ↓
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Tony Johnson
// Nov 23, 2007 at 11:46 am
I couldn’t agree more. As Head of ICT at a Secondary School I have introduced courses from Year 10 onwards that covers graphics, web design, animation, programming and the like. I have deliberately left the office based software out of the equation. Students are more enthusiastic and willing to put in the effort. Unfortunately there are stiill elements of word processing required but they use this to enhance their work and do not require specific teaching of the skills, they tend to know them or find out how to create tables etc. for themselves.
We are able to do this as QCA have approved such courses. However, our hands are tied for the younger students as we have to meet statutory requirements. Hopefully as primary schools are becoming better equipped, pupils will learn the basics of office software at an even younger age and we can foster an element of ‘learn and find out as part of your work’.
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