UK Computing Teachers Concerned That Pupils Know More Than Them 388
mikejuk (1801200) writes A survey of UK schools carried out by Microsoft and Computing at School reveals some worrying statistics that are probably more widely applicable. The survey revealed that (68%) of primary and secondary teachers are concerned that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do. Moreover, the pupils reinforced this finding with 47% claiming that their teachers need more training. Again to push the point home, 41% of pupils admitted to regularly helping their teachers with technology. This isn't all due to the teachers being new at the task — 76% had taught computing before the new curriculum was introduced. It seems that switching from an approach that emphasised computer literacy to one that actually wants students to do more difficult things is the reason for the problem.
Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I knew math, science and sometimes English better than my teachers through high school. Experienced teachers know how to deal with students like us - how would this be any different?
Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I knew math, science and sometimes English better than my teachers through high school. Experienced teachers know how to deal with students like us - how would this be any different?
The real difference is you thought you knew math, science and sometimes English, but when it really came down to it, masters-level mathematics could be whipped out to gently remind you, or perhaps break down some English sentence structure to show your actual understanding vs. what you think you know.
Experienced teachers know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The difference today is you don't have students going home spending another 4 - 6 hours every day tinkering with math or English like you might with computing.
Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite to the contrary. Our teaching schools in the US are the degree mills for the B school dropouts. Simply put, those who can do math realize that teaching is a bad financial career choice. However, this is tolerated by the parents who think that schools are free babysitting and don't value education. There are many great teachers, but few of them can defeat years of shitty parenting on a large scale. Therefore, it really doesn't matter that the plurality of teachers are marginally competent, both in their fields of study and as educators. We set low, low standards as a society, and our teachers meet them. And, we shouldn't blame them; we hire the boards that tolerate it.
Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite to the contrary. Our teaching schools in the US are the degree mills for the B school dropouts. Simply put, those who can do math realize that teaching is a bad financial career choice.
This is another indication of how far out of whack our priorities are as a country. You make money based on how much money you make for someone else, or how hard your position is to fill. But we won't spend money just because something is important; like teachers or quality infrastructure or mitigating climate change or whatever.
The linked article talks about how hard it is to get good teachers for computing because anyone who's any good at it can make a lot more money elsewhere. Is anyone proposing paying a computing teacher $90,000 a year, or whatever is competitive, to compensate for that? Everyone seems to want to pay teachers less because they get summers off. Nobody wants to pay them more because for the vital function they serve in our society. Like I said, priorities out of whack.
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Everyone seems to want to pay teachers less because they get summers off.
Something of a tangent, but I support year-round schools.
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My best teacher, also now my friend loves his summers off.
He is experienced, knows his stuff and basically recycles the same content/lesson plans each year and only updates to improve on what did/didn't work so well, changes in curriculum and administration (as well as to relieve boredom).
On our last conversation, there is a high chance that my son will be in his class this year and from what I have spoken with my teacher friend about - I should recognise a fair bit of the work he has to complete.
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Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is another indication of how far out of whack our priorities are as a country. You make money based on how much money you make for someone else, or how hard your position is to fill. But we won't spend money just because something is important; like teachers or quality infrastructure or mitigating climate change or whatever.
The linked article talks about how hard it is to get good teachers for computing because anyone who's any good at it can make a lot more money elsewhere. Is anyone proposing paying a computing teacher $90,000 a year, or whatever is competitive, to compensate for that?
I had an excellent electronics teacher in HS who mentioned once that he took a 50% paycut when he switched from industry to teaching so I agree
with you completely but what system would you propose? Should we rank occupations and pay them what we value them? This might be possible
in a controlled economy but I'm not sure how you would do it in a free market. Do people who are more skilled at that occupation get paid more?
Even unions have a hard time with this, do you pay based on skill level or senority or
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Republicans know what "tragedy of the commons" is. That's when you socialize something like Education to the point where nobody is willing to pay for it. Even college is getting to the point where it is mostly useless waste of 4 years where working some menial jobs in an industry for less than 2 years will get you better chances and be paid to do it.
Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:5, Insightful)
In related news... Kids often know how to use something, but not how those things actually work. The two are not the same thing, even though they may think it is. TFS doesn't make a clear distinction as to which kind of literacy is at issue.
Why, those teachers may still think email is relevant. To a 15 year old, email might as well be the telegraph.
I doubt a 15 year old knows how either of those actually work, in addition to being clueless about whatever cool new thing they're using. The Curiosity Foo seems weak in this current generation.
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Kids often know how to use something, but not how those things actually work.
In these days of "teach to the test", seems that too many schools don't care about the "how", so don't bother teaching it.
I was a very curious kid. So was my daughter. And so are my young nieces and nephews. Curiosity isn't dead, but does seem to be highly discouraged.
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I'm not sure if your spelling-fu is weak, or if you just don't know what the etymology of "[concept]-fu" is.
Nope. You're (obviously) correct. I got distracted while exercising my weak typing-fu and clicked straight through Preview / Submit - sigh.
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Why, those teachers may still think email is relevant. To a 15 year old, email might as well be the telegraph
The teacher would be right in that case, and the student will be in for a rude awakening when they enter the work force in any sort of knowledge worker role. In business, email is still the medium of choice for written communication. And that's not likely to change in the near future.
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It would be nice if it were better than that, and it actually involved reasonably skilled tea
Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this (Score:5, Informative)
Until very recently computer education in the UK was heavilly focussed on "ICT" which to a large extent ammounted to "pushing buttons in MS office". There was an attidude that permated the computing world (both inside and outside schools) that "you don't need to understand how it works" or "it's too complex for you to understand". Microcomputers that started up at a basic prompt where replaced with PCs were the ability to program was hidden if it was there at all. Systems that curious kids could fiddle with were replaced by systems locked down by network admins.
The result of this attidude persisting for a long time (a couple of decades afaict) was a decline in the number and skill of people applying to university for computing related programs. This decline got the attention of people in high places and there is currently a push to move away from "ICT" to a computing syllabus that actually includes programming and learning about the fundamentals of computers.
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Hence teachers pushed into teaching an area in which they have little knowlege and confidence. Combine that with the availability of material on the internet and through various other outside-school sources and it's not going to be difficult for the top pupils to legitimately overtake the teachers and the mediocre pupils to give the impression that they know more than the teacher.
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I'm pretty sure I knew math, science and sometimes English better than my teachers through high school. Experienced teachers know how to deal with students like us - how would this be any different?
The real difference is you thought you knew math, science and sometimes English, but when it really came down to it, masters-level mathematics could be whipped out to gently remind you, or perhaps break down some English sentence structure to show your actual understanding vs. what you think you know.
Experienced teachers know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The difference today is you don't have students going home spending another 4 - 6 hours every day tinkering with math or English like you might with computing.
Math and Science yes; but English? If you're Elementary and Middle School English teachers did their job right, then most students should have a very firm grasp of the English language grammatically by about 8th or 9th grade, and could easily surpass their teachers in about the same time frame where English classes should be less about grammar and more about comprehension of literary works.
The sad truth is that due to the experiments with learning since the 1970's there are many English teachers (at all
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in about the same time frame where English classes should be less about grammar and more about comprehension of literary works
Why should English classes be more about works of fiction and theatre by dead white European males and less about communicating your own ideas to other people?
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in about the same time frame where English classes should be less about grammar and more about comprehension of literary works
Why should English classes be more about works of fiction and theatre by dead white European males and less about communicating your own ideas to other people?
Who said what materials? Does it really matter whether it is a translation of Homer's Ilyiad, Shakespear, or Godfrey Mutiso Gorry? The point is that you're looking at larger works to understand how language works in bigger and bigger pieces instead of small, isolated samples so you can learn about the bigger picture of writing instead of remaining in an isolated box.
And often covering such materials will lead to improvements in your own writing. That's not to say that writing would not be included, just
Who sets the literary canon (Score:2)
Who said what materials?
Whoever set the curriculum while I was growing up said what materials. Plays by William Shakespeare, specifically the tragedies, were overemphasized in every year of high school except the junior year, which was devoted to American literature. And do English teachers leave out nonfiction because they delegate it to science and history teachers?
Animacy is a dimension of gender (Score:4, Informative)
there are many English teachers (at all levels, even collegiate) that cannot do even basic sentence diagraming, or know that "he or she" is not grammatically correct when trying to be "gender neutral" which should use the neutral gender (it for singular or they for plural).
"He or she" is animate gender; "it" is inanimate gender.
Re:Animacy is a dimension of gender (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically, "he" is the gender-neutral pronoun. Gender itself comes from Latin, and in all romance languages, the masculine is used for gender-neutral or gender-ambigious contexts. It was a hard and fast rule in English until some idiots decided it wasn't PC enough and started railing on people who follow it, but at the same time provide no suitable alternative.
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I'm pretty sure I knew math, science and sometimes English better than my teachers through high school. Experienced teachers know how to deal with students like us - how would this be any different?
The real difference is you thought you knew math, science and sometimes English, but when it really came down to it, masters-level mathematics could be whipped out to gently remind you, or perhaps break down some English sentence structure to show your actual understanding vs. what you think you know.
Experienced teachers know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. The difference today is you don't have students going home spending another 4 - 6 hours every day tinkering with math or English like you might with computing.
Um, don't know about you but I quite well did know math and science far better than many of my teachers. I don't think you know the difference between knowledge and wisdom, either.
I first pointed out an error in a text book in 3rd grade and explained it to my teacher who was quite impressed (yes, I was correct and the book wasn't). I wasn't wiser than her by a long shot. But I was a little smarter in one area.
My 6th grade math and science teacher hated me because I had to point out the errors that she ma
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It's hilarious the parent comment got at least two upvotes. Say what you will about geek arrogance, but insecurity at others being smarter than them is a lot more common on Slashdot than its opposite. Or maybe they just prefer to hide in silence and let the mod points do the talking.
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so what, why would they? I doubt 1 in 20 executives bothers to read the quoted text nor do we ask them to.
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This is no different. Back in the 1970s, our high school physics teacher had the computer terminal in his area, and so he taught the computer class. He wouldn't allow me to take it because, as he said, "you already know more than I do about this."
The important thing is it wasn't an admission of failure on his part. He knew the class was beneath me, and simply didn't want me to waste my time.
1968 (Score:2)
For me, it happened in 1968. I had just started a 3 year curriculum for computers. Started out with FORTRAN 44 on a teletype connected to an IBM 360. Within a month all of us (students) had outpaced the teacher's knowledge. From there it was a matter of reading the manuals we could get our hands on and as much lab time as we could fit in.
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I knew Programming better then some of the Computer Science Professors.
Teaching isn't always about passing knowledge. It is about developing skills. So if you get a kid who knows more about computers then you do that is fine and good. That means you should start teaching skills. Such as using the computer to solve problems, or have them research better methods, give them problems that will make them think. Have them improve their form...
I am not a teacher I work in industry. However I do mentor new emplo
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You're not correct there - computer science is a serious subject, but if you took one of them you'd find it remarkable devoid of "computing" - you'd have a lot of maths and statistics instead.
When I was at university statistical job analysis, algorithms and mathematical modelling were the kind of modules you took, which at the time I thought was pointless, but when you start sizing networks you realise what its all about. For the majority of computing work, its all irrelevant, but fortunately for those of u
It's been going on for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's been going on for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Been there. Only I had been lucky enough that my dad can be quite belligerent when it comes to my education. I butted head with my math teacher, mostly because I came up with a faster, easier and as it turned out better way to solve something. My dad (who is a very nice man, also for offering me the chance for a good education that his dad refused him) only asked if I'm dead sure and then we took the fight. It was a victory eventually, but what was way more important was what I learned:
1) Just because someone claims he is an expert in something doesn't mean he is. Question his results and ask for proof. A degree means jack, a title even less. If I don't know, teach me so I can learn. Explain to understand, do not expect me to believe. This is science. Not religion.
2) Never dismiss a solution as false based on its source. Question its merit based on itself, not on its messenger.
3) When you're certain to be right, escalate past the person who keeps insisting you are not. Maybe there's a different agenda he is pushing aside of what's right or wrong. Quite likely, he is.
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I was the kid that would do extraneous proofs in Geometry just so I could use those theorems later on in the test.
Re:It's been going on for years (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sorry. You're right, today that needs to be said.
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Honestly (that skill needs to be taught. While reading the novel of a post above where grade by grade counts of incorrect test questions were enumerated. Mention was made about "My 6th grade math and science teacher hated me because I had to point out the errors that she made on her exams." (there were others but that's the best quotable). Response: Well, duh! No one likes to be told they're wrong, especially teachers. I can read someone describing that they gently or respectfully pursued such action bu
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I had a similar disagreement with a math teacher who's answer was... Yes I know it's faster and easier to understand that way but I'm teaching you how it will appear in papers that are currently being published, show me you understand it as it's being taught anything else is extra credit.
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Re:It's been going on for years (Score:5, Funny)
If it makes you feel any better, today you would have been expelled & possibly arrested for terroristic threats or some other bullshit.
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Outdated thinking (Score:2)
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Sounds like your program just put stuff on screen in response to a key press. Did the other kids programs that do that also get an F?
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Then the problem wasn't the teacher - it was you. You weren't "somehow supposed to guess", were "supposed to know based on the materiel presented to date".
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I had a teacher fail me on a programming assignment because I was using things she hadn't taught yet.
Depending on what you mean that isn't necessarily a bad thing in a programming course. If the purpose of an assignment is to learn about data structures by recreating them and you back everything with std:vector, you aren't really completing the assignment even if all the functionality is there. Of course, it's also entirely possible that the teacher just didn't know what they were doing or, more concernedly, simply on a power trip; so no judgement, just pointing out a possible counter argument.
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That's a cop out and a shitty teacher -- unable to respect their student(s). The whole point of a teacher is to inspire their students to learn -- NOT to demotivate them! "Success" is the student knowing more then the teacher. That's how Scientists work!
In grade 10 (or 11) I had a physics teacher bust my balls one time because I was using the cosine law [mathsisfun.com] even though it wouldn't be taught until the next grade.
I asked him "Why am I being penalized for understanding Math??"
He relented and said I could keep usi
Re:It's been going on for years (Score:4, Insightful)
Even back in the 80s, I had a teacher fail me on a programming assignment because I was using things she hadn't taught yet. This isn't a 'new' problem. It's difficult for teachers to stay on top of the required curriculum and still have time to be continually training.
That will often be the case because they want to ensure you understand what they are teaching.
For instance, in my networking class I already had a full C/C++ network library that I personally wrote for Linux/POSIX using a similar interface design as the Windows WinSock2 API. However the professor said I could use it only after we had covered the lower level functionality in order to ensure I knew what I was doing, which I did; so my library got used for the second 2/3rds of the class instead of all of it. A little annoying, but sometimes you just have to get over it and deal with it.
I also had a TA that took points off because I used "while(True) {...}" instead of "for (;;;) {}" for an infinite loop. The professor gave me back the points because it was not part of the assignment to do an infinite loop in that manner.
That said, a good teacher will know when to learn from the student and how to allow the students to go beyond what they are teaching.
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I've "lost" my programming teacher during a verbal exam, and she gave me a lower grade on a written assignment since I came to a different (but valid!) solution than she did (there wasn't specified what type of solution was needed, only the problem), but where it got really bad, was when the following semester she presented stuff right out of my team's project-paper from the previous semester ... without even acknowledging it being an almost-direct rip-off.
Took it to the principal/head of the school, who wo
Will the training really matter? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology funding in school districts (in my area these are tax levies) is already insanely high; mostly because we're pushing for tablet devices in schools driven, behind the scenes, by extremely lucrative vendor deals.
Without adequate training, the related curricula are severely limited and thus the added benefits when compared to related cost are low, if at all positive.
Now, this research, as well as the districts, are rightly saying the teachers need more training in order to leverage the technology effectively; however, what really needs to be understood is just how much training is really necessary and whether the tech gap between teachers and their students can really be mitigated.
It is my unfounded opinion that it will never be mitigated enough as teachers are not usually well enough equipped at their own subject matter, let alone keeping up with the taxing knowledge demands of technology.
What we need to do is take a step back and ensure that these additional tax investments in technology are actually doing anything to further student development and because they aren't, think about what we can do to actually concentrate on doing that instead of buying the new and shiny and letting it, effectively, collect dust in the corner while levy after levy is passed to support it.
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I'm preaching to the 4-digit choir here, I know. Let me issue the disclaimer that I am not a teacher but a bunch of my friends are, and my job does depend on staying up to date.
You're right, the gap cannot be mitigated. It's how kids' lives and brains work. We were the same way at one point, too. You'll never have as much time to learn new stuff, nor the same neuroplasticity, as you did when you were a bored junior high schooler with all those summers and weekends and snow days and such. It was nice to be s
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Staying ahead of the kinds means understanding the fundamentals and teaching them that - the kids may know Ruby or Scala or whatever the current fad is, but if they don't understand when to use an array or a list we'll continue to get shockingly crap programming from them.
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To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
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One of my college computer science professors told our class something that stuck with me ever since. He said that what he was teaching us would be obsolete by the time we graduated, but the concepts behind it would endure. Sure enough, I don't use a line of specific code that he taught me - or even the language that we learned at the time - but knowing
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It's one thing for a teacher, like my computer science teacher in high school, to be expected to understand computer SCIENCE. It's another to expect them to know a bunch of software packages. That's one of the big problems with computer education in schools; the idiots putting together the curriculum don't understand the difference between conceptual learning and facility with using systems.
That is the issue here: it used to be knowing about software packages, the "idots" have changed it (see here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org], among others) to include some programming. FTA "It seems that switching from an approach that emphasised computer literacy to one that actually wants students to do more difficult things is the reason for the problem."
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Right, agreed. So, once upon a time we had typing classes. Would you then expect the typing teacher to take on teaching shop and engineering courses that were about how to build a typewriter? No.
I'm critical of teachers for a lot of things, but not knowing how to teach Towers of Hanoi isn't one of them. Demanding that someone who knows how to teach Towers of Hanoi get paid the same as the social studies or health teacher IS one of them.
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There's another fairly major point: although the title of this /. thread talks about "computing teachers", the summary talks about "primary and secondary teachers", and the original press release [msdn.com] talks about "teachers responsible for teaching computing". Primary school teachers, who were already expected to know everything about everything, are now (PDF warning) expected to teach programming, debugging, networking, etc. [computingatschool.org.uk] There's no particular reason why people who signed up to teach 5 to 7 year-olds ten year
Drop the classes (Score:5, Insightful)
If the kids already know enough of the subject matter, that's a good indication that the class can be dropped, and replaced with something that they don't know much about.
Re:Drop the classes (Score:4, Insightful)
This. I work for a university, and official policy is that you can test out of any course, for any major, if you can prove that you already know the contents of the course ( though tests, and meeting with a group of professors who simply ask about some concepts and ask you to explain them). Saved me from having to repeat about one years worth of classes, and freed me to be able to learn things that actually were useful as opposed to being bored repeating things. High school should have the same concept. Kids aren't stupid and lowering the bar to make sure everyone feels "smart" is doing a disservice to most of the kids in class.
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I work for a university, and official policy is that you can test out of any course, for any major, if you can prove that you already know the contents of the course
Accredited, or the kind we used to see advertised in e-mails with a "U`N`I`V`E`R`5`I`T`Y D,I,P,I_,O,M,A,S" heading?
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Yes, all of the kids are supposed to read. Not all of them need to understand computing. Instead of trying to get all the kids on the same level, it is better to recognize that different kids have different levels, and send them to different schools.
No transportation zones (Score:2)
it is better to recognize that different kids have different levels, and send them to different schools.
And get them to and from these "different schools" how, while the parents are away at work? A lot of districts have been cutting school bus service to save costs in the face of declining tax revenue [fortwayneschools.org].
User knowledge vs. admin knowledge (Score:2)
Is it possible for someone to be in the top and bottom half at once because of security policies on the computer at home? Consider a student who understands word processing and JavaScript programming but doesn't know how to install software because the parents have always been there to do anything that requires elevation.
Computer literacy? (Score:3)
Is that standard knowing what the mouse buttons do? Because I wouldn't call that literacy. That is about as much literacy as knowing what vowels are is english literacy.
Raise the bar.
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No, It's the modern name for typing class with Powerpoint thrown in for good measure.
Actually using a computer for more than document creation? Rocket science I tell you, rocket science.
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Wait - you're using a computer to create content instead of just consume it? ...are you a wizard?
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excel is not computer literacy. Excel is excel.
Kids these days ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone talks about how today's young people are computer geniuses, but I'm a college physics professor, and I can tell you that kids coming up from high school are as clueless about tech as their grandparents. They just know how to Twitter and Instagram, but they have no idea how computers or the Internet work.
This isn't new, of course, nobody understands the technology their world is based on. My father and grandfather lived in an era where most people knew how a car worked and how to fix it, but in my generation that's a mystery. I understand how computers work and how to fix them, but the next generation treats them as black boxes. And so on.
Re:Kids these days ... (Score:5, Funny)
Complexity (Score:5, Insightful)
My father and grandfather lived in an era where most people knew how a car worked and how to fix it, but in my generation that's a mystery.
I assure you that at no time in history did "most people" know how cars worked or how to fix them. Perhaps a higher percentage of the population than now but it never was "most". Not ever.
Most people have always been clueless to varying degrees about many technologies they depend on. Furthermore, while the basic principles of how cars work hasn't really changed much, there is a LOT more technology involved these days so there is much more to learn. I have owned cars where you could almost literally stand in the engine compartment with the engine still in the vehicle. You could do that because they were very simple compared to today's vehicles. Now you have to deal with a myriad of sensors, ECUs, emissions control equipment, electronics and other stuff that simply didn't even exist 40+ years ago. An engine compartment is packed very tightly now and there is a lot more to know about.
I understand how computers work and how to fix them, but the next generation treats them as black boxes.
No more than they ever did. However the same thing applies. When I was younger it was actually possible to have a fairly complete understanding of how the 8088 computer on your desk worked. The technology now is quite a bit more complex "under the hood" (so to speak) and it's a lot harder to understand more than basic principles. It can still be done but there is more to learn than there once was.
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I have owned cars where you could almost literally stand in the engine compartment with the engine still in the vehicle. You could do that because they were very simple compared to today's vehicles.
You could do that because they were wasting a lot of space in the name of aesthetics, and because they wanted to give you access to work on stuff while leaving the vehicle intact. Today, major repairs are meant to be done with the engine and probably transmission removed from the vehicle entirely; although many dealers have come up with tricks that permit them to skip the engine removal step, they'll still charge you for pulling it as they'll bill you at a flat rate which is based on the estimated time to c
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Reading this... I can't help but fall out of my chair laughing.
Knowing how a CPU works is pretty much useless for fixing computers - because you don't fix them at that level. You fix them at the "black box" level - you don't solder in a new NAND gate, you swap out the graphics card. The same goes for working on cars in your father and grandfather's day... Very few of them knew more than the bare basi
Meh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I was in school, I had a better grasp of "modern technology" than most of my professors. This was in a computer science program. It's not a problem, because my CS professors didn't need to teach me how to use Facebook or make a slideshow shiny enough to woo investors. They still understood algorithms better than I did, and that was the knowledge they were passing on.
In today's shocking news story, we find that older people are familiar with an older generation of tools. For most "primary and secondary teachers", their job is to teach the basic skills and concepts that are elemental for the more advanced intellectual tasks encountered in a professional career. Sure, technology can assist in that endeavor, but it's not the whole solution. Teachers only need enough technology knowledge to use the technology needed for their classes. Anything more is gratuitous.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
68% of primary and secondary teachers are concerned that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do. Moreover, the pupils reinforced this finding with 47% claiming that their teachers need more training...
Polls are great, but just imagine what it would be like if we lived in a world where there was actually a way to measure who knows what...
Which is why they will reach for the obscure/old (Score:3)
The other thing I foresee are a whole lot of frustrated kids who write far better code than was asked for yet will be told that their code is "wrong" because it doesn't match what was expected. For instance a "while" loop being insisted on with a "for" loop being rejected. Especially if it is newer C++ for loop that can iterate through something like a vector.
Then just to piss everyone off I can foresee many teachers being grammar nazis. So if(x==2) would lose you marks because it wasn't if( x==2 ) which would be considered better by that teacher than if( x == 2) but still not as good as if ( x == 2 ). But the same student might as well quit the course if they thought that using the magic number 2 instead of a const or a #define was actually a problem. I suspect that following strict formatting guidelines for some teachers will be more important than having the code even compile.
Teaching (Score:5, Insightful)
Then stop teaching.
Seriously, I work in schools - I'm an IT Manager for independent (private) schools. The good teachers are the ones that have knowledge to impart to the kids, the other type generally do not know anything until they have to teach it and then they learn it badly and, thus, teach it badly. Can you imagine being a science or maths teacher and never having done "chemical reactions" or "simultaneous equations"? Sure, there's always an answer that even the teacher won't know but it shouldn't be something so far out of your reach that you can't a) take an educated guess on the spot and b) come back the next day with the properly researched answer.
With the best IT teachers, I can discuss electronics, computer science and mathematics at a level where neither of us need explain ourselves. They've probably done my job in the past, for the most part, too. And, very deliberately, they will refer to themselves as IT teachers or CS teachers and not ICT teacher (which involves using a computer to do word processing, not anything the kids couldn't pick up on their own in ten minutes).
The last lot of students that went through the school I'm at were building drones running on Raspberry Pi's and .NET Gadgeteer, they were cobbling together Z80 and 6502 circuits in their lunch break, and they were programming in C#, C and assembler. Some of it wasn't stuff we'd done before, but we managed to teach them new stuff all the way through, based on extensive knowledge of the subject and actually SITTING AND LEARNING the stuff they wanted to learn in advance so they could be taught effectively. And, there, it's really more of a "I've never done C# but it's a programming language that I just need to learn the quirks and syntax of and all my old knowledge then comes back into play".
If you can't do this, as an IT teacher, then you probably should go back to school yourself. This is no more insulting than suggesting that a French teacher know French, or a Maths teacher know Maths.
If you're not the one teaching, why bother to have you there?
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"which involves using a computer to do word processing, not anything the kids couldn't pick up on their own in ten minutes..."
Because elementary school kids can pickup word processing on their own in 10 minutes? Really??? Tell me about it...
The best teachers aren't afraid of that (Score:4, Insightful)
The best teachers aren't afraid of students who know something they don't. Teaching teachers all the knowledge is impossible. Teaching teachers humility is possible, though seldom seen.
Learned programming in the '70s... (Score:3)
...when (leading-edge) schools were just starting to get computers. I found it to be good motivation that I was at the same level as the teachers. We were all in it together, learning this stuff for the first time.
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I don't know where you live, but the teachers that I know personally, here in Florida, have to take workshops & continuing education courses for the majority of their summer.
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That only works for the cases where the teachers are paid for that time in the summer.
Often, that is not the case, and instead they are working another job to replace the paycheck that stops coming during that period.
It's easy to blame the teachers for this, but I try not expect people to spend a quarter of the unpaid time I see teachers already spending doing class prep, let alone more.
(I'm sure that there are teachers that don't spend that time. I'm also sure that there are teachers, somewhere, that actu
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That's not supposed to mean you get 20 weeks of vacation each year.
That's a myth. Teachers will often have to be working several weeks after students are no longer in the classroom, as well as return several weeks before students do. Further, depending on the school those teachers may have to find seasonal work for the summer in order to keep their income high enough to pay the bills over the summer break.
Just saying, summer vacation is not necessarily very much of a vacation for teachers.
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I thought they were supposed to use that time to work on the land and bring in the harvest.
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And who's going to out you as an ignorant fool if you don't teach them? You could always claim that those are flavor of the month artists while only the old tomes nobody can read anymore are the classics of literature and nobody could dare to stand up against you because, well, they ARE the classics.
No such luck with IT. Yes, Cobol might be a classic programming language but you better teach my kid something he can actually USE!
Blame Sonny Bono (Score:2)
There are new writers all the time - even in english.
But none of these new writers' works will enter the public domain where teachers and curriculum-setters are safe from publishers breathing down their necks as to the form and manner of teaching those works. A fair use defense works only if your school district can afford to defend a trial. So instead, the curriculum continues to emphasize works first published in 1922 or earlier.
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And by poor learners, I mean those who can only learn, if at all, by being taught. They don't learn on their own.
You just described the typical American who believes that graduating (or dropping out) from school ends their obligation to learn anything new about life. I always cringed when I hear a software engineer bitch and moan about learning something new to do his job better. He should have become a teacher instead.
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Because anyone with a masters degree in computing could be earning double or triple what teachers get paid.
Re:Teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
In the area I live, we have something referred to as "tenure" for unionized public elementary and high school teachers.
What this roughly means is that once a teacher is past their probationary period (something around two years I think), they can only be let go for gross misconduct (like showing up drunk too often and swearing at their students in a drunken slur) and only after a lengthy and costly hearing process (during which they collect their pay but are assigned duties that don't put them in contact with students or simply do not come to work).
During probation, they can be fired for incompetence, but once they make tenure that's extremely difficult.
Teachers can still be laid off if staffing needs decline - but then seniority rules. The most recently hired is the first laid off. I think this is within classification - if a decline in students results in the need for one less Science teacher, I think the least senior Science teacher goes even though there is a less senior Art teacher at the same school/district.
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On top of that, the low pay and asshole students make teaching a very thankless profession. That's why most people who have an ounce of brains do something else. If we would treat our teachers better we'd probably get a better quality of people into the profession.
And then there's people like yourself who think it's the teacher's fault their spoiled kids aren't learning anything. I'm concluding this by your third sentence where you suggest that all of the existing teachers are of low quality. Your little snowflake couldn't possibly be at fault, could he/she....must be the teachers.
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Not so much in NJ, teachers have it made here. My kid has a 7th grade math "teacher" who's just riding his way out, he barely teaches or talks at all. He sits with his feet on the desk and does facebook, and tells the kids to just read their textbook.
I guess by doing nothing he can claim he's "doing no harm."
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New Jersey also has some of the highest property taxes in the nation, and a majority of those taxes are to support the schools there. The state has a separate, independent school district for every single municipality (all 550 of them), because everyone wants "home rule" and no one wants to combine their school district with the poorer sections of their county. By contrast, other east coast states farther south usually have a separate school district for every county, not every single little town, so they
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Do parents encourage it? (Score:2)
The 22yr old graduate that has done nothing but play with consoles all their life
When parents prefer to buy consoles and console games instead of PC games so that their kids don't have to hog the family PC, to what extent does this discourage the kids from learning basic concepts of computing?