[Year 12 IT Apps] Where did all the girls go?

Sat Dec 1 23:53:12 EST 2012

I agree that aspects of the current course are not attractive to young students and especially not girls. In my experience, having come back to teaching after a long layoff, the IT course/s are out of date, unexciting and dry. The business studies heritage is still rearing its head – take for example the first exam question in part B that asked, "An accounting company wants to raise its profile…"

In a world where today's students are inundated with a myriad of beautiful design, products that deliver personalised information on a scale that is hard to keep up with, business models that weren't invented 5 years ago,  the context of the modern day IT course needs be more within this context. IT nowadays is much much more than firewalls, routers, spreadsheets and databases, even though these concepts are important they shouldn't be approached from the micro perspective. IT in our globalised society has become a broad church that encompasses multiple forms of media delivered through innovatively attractive design sensibilities and these within open source worlds. They affect the way we live and enjoy our lives and our students live, breathe and revel in this environment. Yet we want them to learn how to normalise data and then import the result into a database? And then only to demonstrate partial database skills within a convoluted and difficult to learn application that would be best approached from within a specialised/tertiary context.

I would like to see an IT course that takes a much more macro approach. I would advise those that are planning the next iteration of the IT study design to read through the IB Information technology in a global society subject outline. This would be a good start. Also, a change of name of the course to something like Information Design and Technology or something that evokes a more exciting prospect to both male and female students. Maybe Information Design and Technology in a global society?

This discussion should continue because at the moment students are voting with their feet.

George

University High School
77 Story St
Parkville 3052
phone: 93472022
mobile: 0412934782

From: "Bane, Janet A" <bane.janet.a at edumail.vic.gov.au<mailto:bane.janet.a at edumail.vic.gov.au>>
Reply-To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List <itapps at edulists.com.au<mailto:itapps at edulists.com.au>>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:01:34 +0000
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List <itapps at edulists.com.au<mailto:itapps at edulists.com.au>>
Subject: [Year 12 IT Apps] Where did all the girls go?

Hi Mark

Just noticed that you haven't had a girl in your ITA class since 2008. I have also noticed a steady decline in the number of girls choosing IT and its something that concerns me, not just as a teacher,, but from the standpoint that girls don't see IT as a possible career or something that they would enjoy or be good at.  I am not teaching year 12 this year, but my Year 11 class only had 3 girls in semester 1, then it got down to 2 in Semester 2.  Now we have "stepped up" to 2013, there is only one girl, and 24 boys in my Year 11 IT class.  Year 10 classes have shown the same trend.

I think its time that IT had a "makeover", in terms of finding out what things would appeal to girls.  From my experience they tend to enjoy projects where they can explore their creativity, rather than being overly technical. I think its time to acknowledge that some aspects of the current course are turning students off (male and female) as VCE numbers are in decline.

We need to have a serious think about how we can attract students back to IT, in particular girls who make up 50% of the VCE cohort otherwise we will all eventually be out of a job.

what do others think?

Janet Bane
Patterson River SC

________________________________
From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au> [itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au<mailto:itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au>] on behalf of Mark KELLY [kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au<mailto:kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>]
Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012 8:22 PM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] Questions to test understanding

G'day Liam.

This topic could become an Edulist topic in its own right.  Writing questions is as much art as science, and usually based on lots of experience of how students typically think and respond.  Perhaps this is why some exam questions written by advanced IT academics who don't actually teach 16-17 year olds occasionally go wrong?

I've just finished writing 2 ITA exams and - thinking back - a lot of my writing was based on predicting what an average kid of mine would read and how he/she* would respond. The challenge is to write questions to differentiate between D, C, B, and A+ students fairly, and give each of them a chance to show what they know.

I also learn a lot from classic bad questions I've seen in exams: those that are too easy, removed from the study design, vaguely worded, ambiguous, confusing, incorrect in fact.  Some questions are fine, but the suggested answers are the problem: this is a big problem with VCAA exams since you can't complain about an answer after the exams have been marked.

But your average exam will have a very few low-level Bloom taxonomy questions: define this word etc.  One or two, to settle students' nerves at the start of section A and B.   The majority of them, however, should be getting students to apply their knowledge in a given context, and justifying their opinions.

And I agree with other posters: you need to abide by exam conventions, but also sometimes break out and challenge kids with unexpected (but fair and relevant) means of assessing their understanding.

I keep telling my kids all year: your job is to fill your Bucket O' Knowledge with ITA facts. Your payday comes when you select relevant facts from the bucket and apply them to a question in an exam or outcome.  It's the judgement you get marks for, not the memorization of words and definitions.

Dammit.  This post has already started to become a thesis.  Time to stop.

Good question, though, Liam. It's one I don't usually think about consciously, but it lurks, unuttered in my exam-writing reptilian brain stem.

Mark
--

* (dammit- it's "he" - no girls in my ITA classes since 2008!)

--

On 29 November 2012 17:29, O'Grady, Liam A <o'grady.liam.a at edumail.vic.gov.au<mailto:o'grady.liam.a at edumail.vic.gov.au>> wrote:

Hi Everyone,

What makes a good exam/test question for IT? Do you have any that you would be happy to share?

Recently I was writing my yr 11 exams and trying to improve the questions I had that really give kids a chance to show their understanding of IT. The following questions arose in this process:

1.      How much should questions be about factual recall and how much about how to apply the knowledge?

2.      What is a good question?

3.      How could we write questions that are interesting enough that the kids want to answer them?

4.      How can we write a good question and make it easy to mark? For example, the question below whilst having scope for more detailed answers could also be harder to mark fairly.

One question I came up with is below. This is NOT a model question – just my attempt to get the ball rolling.

Question 7

St Mungo’s is a large hospital network with hospitals in all Australian capital cities. All computer servers run from a datacentre in the main hospital in Hobart. These servers contain all the electronic information used by the hospital. This includes patient medical records, billing details, medical operations scheduling, staff details and the ordering system for medical supplies. All other branches connect to the datacentre via a VPN connection through the Internet.

They are thinking about moving to Cloud Computing because it is very expensive running their own datacentre in terms of staff and hardware. A couple of times recently there have been power failures in the datacentre which has meant that none of the hospitals could access the information needed to run.

a)      What would you recommend that they do? Justify your recommendation. (4 Marks)

Cheers

Liam O’Grady

Brunswick Secondary College

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--
Mark Kelly - kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au<mailto:kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
Manager of ICT, Reporting, IT Learning Area
McKinnon Secondary College, McKinnon Rd, McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
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_______________________________________________ http://www.edulists.com.au - FAQ, resources, subscribe, unsubscribe IT Applications Mailing List kindly supported by http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/infotech/itapplications3-4.html - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority
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Important - This email and any attachments may be confidential. If received in error, please contact us and delete all copies. Before opening or using attachments check them for viruses and defects. Regardless of any loss, damage or consequence, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not, resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any attached files our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. Any representations or opinions expressed are those of the individual sender, and not necessarily those of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
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