Australia bins standalone school computing curriculum The review of Australia's national curriculum has found that “While there is a clear case for the introduction of the ICT capability itself to run right through the whole Australian Curriculum, we are not convinced that a separate subject of the kind that has been designed needs to be mandatory at any level.” The …
My nephew just started Uni three weeks ago, 25 years ago I was there myself and had a great time girls, girls girls.... Didn't do much work.
He was greatly disappointed when he found out that on his engineering course there were only 15 girls out of 180 on the course. Worst of all he has a 38 hour week of lectures, hardly any social time.
Still he perked up when he mentioned a friend of his on an IT course, only 3 girls on that he was told but they spend all their free time locked in their rooms coding.
Stick to the arts and you'll have more sex.
After teaching the four R's ( Reading, writing, 'rithmetic and rhetoric), some creativity classes like art and music there isn't much left in the day. Adding History and Science and the day is really crowded.
My biggest complaint about schools is that they never teach you how to learn. Everybody learns differently but the schools all use a cookie cutter approach mandated by the latest fad.
the inch deep & mile wide was a criticism of the whole national curriculum in the review.
Whilst the big 4 (English, Math, Science & History) will need changes, it looks like Geography, CAPA & PDHPE will, with technology(s) need to be rewritten from the ground up.
As my late dad used to say: "Your univesity diploma is a not a statement that you have learned anything. It is a testament that you have the capacity to learn something".
As far as coding for kids is concerned, coding as just coding is a pointless excercise when kids are concerned. You cannot teach something that abstract. You have to make the subject of the coding do something. So you either have to combine that with art (Scratch) or with practical "do this" (Pi). Otherwise kids will see it as the most boring subject in the world. It also has to be done at the right time. My older one did Scratch in school at the age of 11 which is seriously too late for this. By ~ 3 years.
Coding is not the point.
I am in a room surrounded by people who know the syntax, and on a good day, they can produce something that under the correct input conditions will run. Teaching syntax to children won't help anything.
The issue I have with the people in the room (and a lot of these guys (zero women as usual) have engineering degrees) is
a) Lack of structure. They start by writing code instead of understanding the task. Children with hammers, seeing everything as a nail. It never really occurs to them to design anything, or solve problems with the application of thought. There model of work is not all that dissimilar to Stevie Wonder with a Rubiks cube - they think that an "iterative approach" is a rational and useful methodology, when each iteration being based on a guess. I see this as a failure of their engineering degree. Agile and the promotes this broken notion.
b) Lack of basic understanding of logic. You cannot code your way out of something logically impossible - many tasks are logically impossible to solve - PHBs love asking for these - so one needs to understand precisely what it is that is trying to be done. Understanding what is doable from the start does not seem to be in their mindset. This of course requires independent thought.
c) Lack of creativity. They underestimate the creativity of morons (aka. users) and overestimate their own.
Guessing one's way iteratively to the answer has a low probability of success - teaching children this would be the best start, followed by some formal logic. Syntax is easy. Can't be that hard, can it?
Perhaps they can start with teaching programmers not to be such arseholes who think that everyone else is a moron. The programmers might learn how to design and code applications so that people can easily use them. Apple programmers do it on a regular basis, how about you give it a try, sport. Don't fall off your high horse, you might hurt yourself on the way down
"Apple programmers do it on a regular basis, how about you give it a try, sport. Don't fall off your high horse, you might hurt yourself on the way down"
While I cut the odd bit of code now and again, that is a trivially small piece of my job. So if you are implying I am an "arsehole programmer" (which is how I read it), then you would be pissing very wide of the mark.
Programmers are generally the people who cut code. I have met precious few with skilled in UI design (they exists for sure) and even fewer with even a basic understanding of visual design and colour. Programmers are the drones of the industry - get over it. All walks of life have their share of morons, "programming" is hardly an exception - it is however a place where lack of intellectual skills is laid bare for all to see.
Sincere apologies for the hasty spelling mistakes that crept in when I reconstructed the post, however - I will call the morons for what they are - and the arseholes as well, two groups into which you readily fit.
Do you really think your minescule brain has the capability of offending me? Oh dear ... plod off.
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