[Year 12 Its] Improving the status of VCE IT subjects

[Jack Matthews]

Hi everyone

I am a relatively new teacher and am rather disappointed in the current VCE 
IT subjects, in particular the content taught in Information System.

In my opinion there need to be a new subject titled something like 
‘Computing fundamentals”.

I have found that there are many students that want to learn the technical 
aspects of computers,  including Programming, Binary computation, circuits, 
SQL, Network communication (packets), Hexadecimal, octal, encryption/sorting 
algorithms, general problem solving etc.

Not only would these be good offering for students and future university 
courses; It would also be relatively easy to examine.

In my opinion, IT studies in general are dumbed down which is the reason 
students don’t even need IT at year 12 to enter a IT course at university.

It is generally considered by teachers and students alike to be an easy 
bludge subject.  And yes, it is!!  Having worked as a programmer in 
industry, this really annoys me, as I know I have worked tiresly on a 
programming problem for days.

A simple example exam question might be: Displaying the hex output of a 
packet sniffer and an ASCII chart, then get the students to interpret the 
protocol used, information sent etc.  A more mathematical approach needs to 
be taken.  “Correct / Incorrect”, none of this interpretive stuff that seems 
to be continuously presenting itself in IT Systems exams.

I know personally that I have many students that are capable of completing 
such a course.  I would love to see an IT course that is comparable in 
difficulty to Physics, in other words ‘challenging’!

What do others think?

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