back to article How to promote CSIRO's ICT in Schools in your community

A couple of weeks ago, The Register launched a campaign in support of the CSIRO's ICT in Schools program, an effort to get IT pros sharing their experience with kids in schools around Australia. The good news is that at last count a dozen Reg readers had signed up as volunteers! That's a decent number and more than half way …

  1. Woza
    Headmaster

    Before unleashing that text, might want to fix the typo at the end of the first paragraph.

  2. RealFred

    You may also want to correct some of the facts,

    there are ample numbers of skilled IT graduates and experienced workers that don't have jobs in IT and can't get jobs in IT because of offshoring.

    Working with teachers in schools is not for the feint-of-heart. Once you get around their attitude of they know everything and you know nothing because you're not a teacher, you may make some inroads. If it requires that teachers have to give over control of something, it will never happen. If they have to change how they teach, it will never happen because most of them are still stuck in the "stand at the front of the class and lecture students" mode of teaching.

    How do I know this, I worked at a school in IT for 10 years.

    The CSIRO should do something worthwhile with its time and money.

    1. GrumpyOldBloke

      In addition to RealFred's points: the motivation to learn comes from some future perspective or an unmet need. A barrier to participation in IT is that kids now have few unmet technology needs. Can't be bothered even breaking wind; there's an app for that. Have a great idea for a game; organising or shooting? Robotics; cost versus benefit and industrial robotics already do it better and faster. All this before we get to the 457's and the patent trolls. Gone are the days when 10 Print "Hello World", 20 GOTO 10 was the leading edge. This was the mistake the Raspberry Pi team made. Teaching more kids programming / IT was not about accessibility, it was about needs.

      To get kids doing IT you either make them do it (a need to pass a test) which will kill any future interest or you find a genuine unmet need and encourage the kids to solve it before every man and his dog writes an app and patents the idea or governments decide it is a threat to mass surveillance and control. To make it accessible to the many the need must be able to be constructed lego block like - ie at a high enough level of abstraction that you are back to teaching applications, configurations and themes not programming per se and it must be on a relevant device, their smart phone. The completion of the need must also convey a sense of ownership and empowerment therefore you are talking open source, possibly client and private server (role for the Raspberry Pi?) and definitely networking, encryption, certificates, revocation and stenography.

      Perhaps coming up with engaging lesson plans and the research of unmet technology needs in teens is an area where the CSIRO could spend its time and money. Though I suspect that the organisation has become so politicised and politically correct after a decade of global warming theology that it would struggle with this task.

  3. cracked

    More Moaning (constructive I hope)

    Yeah, I'm 4 days late ...

    Given the intended audience for this article

    1. It would be brilliant if the website did not require www to function

    2. It would be even better if the site worked on httpS:

    3. And - if No2 is too hard / expensive - At least the script that processes the form was httpS

    Just sayin', please don't shoot me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More Moaning (constructive I hope)

      Want https huh? Well if you can't expect security from gov IT, you certainly can't expect it from Academia. After all this is only personal information, not test results.

      Weird however Academia is improving online practices (albeit slowly, and except where it requires budget). Yet Gov is actively spending to do the opposite and break freedom of expression... who benefits apart from the terrorists who seek to make the infidels turn on themselves?

      Anyway, If no-one else will, I will call an elephant in the room the Great Beast she is:

      We pay Sports stars Millions, Politicians Millions, Contract workers and middle management everywhere hundreds of thousands- but teach? The minimum we can.

      But then, after three decades getting ICT wrong in schools, we leave it to the CSIRO, ACS and the community to fix-

      i. ZERO

      ii. ZIP

      iii. NADA

      iv. 0/5 of SOD-ALL

      Perhaps we could try crowd-sourcing ICT teachers next, a race to the bottom perhaps but when that's where you start, what is there to loose other than yet another generation's opportunities?

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