Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomkat
Nah, "IT" became "ICT" (the "C" is "Communication") when modems and the internet became more widespread. It's still the poor man's Computer Science!
What should they be studying in ICT lessons then? What do you think would be more useful? (I'm really hoping noone says PHP coding or javascript or something retarded like that).
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The concepts behind internet-based communication, data storage and correlation, etc. Teaching javascript would be as retarded as teaching students how to create animated gifs, unless you used javascript to explain the benefits of abstraction and state-based versus stateless transactions and other such concepts core to computer-based communication.
We we taught the TCP/IP stack when I did my A-Level in IT. But we were taught
how it works, not
why the TCP/IP paradigm works better than other paradigms. (see, if someone had taught us about abstraction and state versus stateless transactions we would have grasped why it works so well)
If you teach someone
how something works she can use that application or whatever, but if you teach someone
why it works (which can be often done through promoting exploration of problems and possible solutions, especially if you want her to internalise that new concept) she can then apply that knowledge elsewhere.
Those employed in education seem to brandish the work "transferable skills" so much these days, but what you really need are abstract concepts - the
whys. These abstract concepts are imbued in all subjects (abstraction and stateless transactions were the examples I gave for ICT) and systems, and these abstract concepts are in their very essence transferable. But what's really important here is that these concepts get the students
thinking.
It's fine to teach people how to achieve an objective, like using excel or animated gif creation applications, but you must realise you are doing nothing more than programming a drone to perform a task; there is very little intellectual activity there.