[Year 12 IPM] IT structure in lower sceondary levels

[Bill Kerr]

On 6/7/05, fiona at balmoralhs.vic.edu.au <fiona at balmoralhs.vic.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> When I broached the subject with my principal last year we discussed the 
> idea of teachers in other subjects teaching I.T. My response to that was 
> totally honest - they dont have the skills required. Some do, but not many. 
> I think if my principal wanted it taught through other departments my first 
> solution would be to carry out a skills survey of the staff to see how many 
> can actually use the software effectively. In particular I would question 
> them about using software other than microsoft word.


I hope your principal took notice of your honesty, Fiona

It was pointed out on the SA list a few years ago, by Tim Knight, that 
students enter secondary school (year 8 in SA) without knowing even Word 
properly. The list of Word skills they often don't know would include:

show / hide feature
search and replace
copy, cut and paste shortcuts
Page setup
section breaks, page breaks, setup columns in one part of the document
altering tabs, tab leaders
font awareness
alignment, justification, line spacing
view multiple documents, eg. use Alt + tab to move between them
insert table, modify columns, rows, cells, borders
insert graphics then wrap text 
import spreadsheets and charts
headers / footers
special symbols using Windings, Webdings fonts
Draw tools
inverse text
ordered and unordered lists 

*Common errors*:

accept first word suggested by spellchecker
can't proof read for errors that spell checker misses
can't use ruler for indenting paragraphs
use space bar instead of tabs
press enter rather than let text wrap or use column breaks
don't user page breaks, just press enter

The policy in my school (and many others) has been to integrate IT into the 
curriculum. It hasn't worked. Why on earth would it work? Would it work if 
an English specialist took year 8 Science. Usually not. 

IT is universal, all teachers should learn it. It's not going to happen, due 
to limited access, limited training, a very fast moving learning domain, and 
a large group of teachers hanging in there until retirement day rolls 
around. As Thomas Kuhn put it:
"the paradigm shift takes 25 years because the older generation has to die 
out"
(change that to 35 years because the older generation is now living longer)

Rob Attrill <attrill.robert.j at edumail.vic.gov.au> on Tue, 07 Jun 2005 
> 10:06:28 +1000 wrote:
> > I know this has been raked over regularly, but if you have the time I
> > would appreciate if you could let me know if you have any personal
> > experience or strong opinions on the matter. I have some specific
> > aspects to consider, one of which is the impact on and experience of the
> > model on senior IT classes.
> 

Many students on entering year 11 Personal Information Programming in our 
school still centre headings by pressing space bar and never use the 
show/hide key in Word

Word deficiences is just the start of it. There is a litancy. Do most 
students know what a bit, a byte, a KB, a MB or a GB are? Do they know View 
> Details and click on Size to sort from smallest to largest? In most cases, 
no, and its time already to put TB in the curriculum because a single fibre 
will soon be able to carry a terabit per second.

The other issue that I'd mention is that IT is moving very fast, due to 
Moores Law. It's difficult for IT specialist teachers to keep up with all 
the new things that are happening, many of them very important, not fads, 
although we can always argue about that :-)

Which subject in the curriculum is changing most rapidly - english, history, 
SOSE, IT etc. It's a no brainer, IT is transforming the world rapidly - we 
have the privilege of teaching the most rapidly changing and interesting 
subject in the world today and what is the policy direction - to hand it 
over to teachers who don't know much about it

It's a scandal, yes, Rob, I have strong opinions about this
-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
http://intranet.woodvillehs.sa.edu.au/kerrbi/index.htm
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