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

[Con Zymaris]

On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 06:55:28PM +1000, Jack Matthews wrote:
> 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?

;-)

You're fighting an uphill battle. 

Let me tell you what our Minister for ICT said at the recent VicIT
drinks and nibblies evening at the museum. Marsha's words are, and I
paraphrase, we don't want to focus on the geeky and the techy, we have
cheap offshore labor to do the actual tech grunt work, why would we want
to do hard-core tech stuff here, like programming?

If that's the direction being set by the person at the top, fat chance 
you have of making a difference ;-)

The mealy-mouthed management consultants have taken over the asylum.

All the best in your efforts.

Cheers,

Con Zymaris

- CEO, Cybersource Pty. Ltd.
- Director, Open Source Industry Australia, Limited.
- Convenor, Open Source Victoria (A Government-funded industry cluster.)

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
Web: http://www.cyber.com.au/  Phone: 03 9621 2377   Fax: 03 9621 2477