From donna at catalyst-au.net Mon Jul 17 12:56:46 2017 From: donna at catalyst-au.net (Donna Benjamin) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2017 12:56:46 +1000 Subject: [Opensource] Urgent / Important: Is "Computer Science" Science? Message-ID: Amazing. I wrote this 5 years ago! I'm baaaacccckkkk!!!! So much has changed. Where are you at? Is OpenSource even vaguely relevant to today's school tech landscape? Do you Moodle, Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, Mahara, Koha, Libre/OpenOffice, Inkscape, Audacity, GIMP... Or did proprietary software win? I've been out of the loop. Seems "the cloud" became the big new shiny - and it is! And so much of it is powered by opensource. Computer science IS science. And Digital Technologies are part of the Australian Curriculum. So now what? I went to valatechcamp last week, and heard a speaker from Aarnet describe a gap... infrastructure literacy... do we really know how information moves from A to B? She described digital literacy, digital capability and digital specialty... That seems useful to me. Moving beyond "General Capability" toward Specialist knowledge and skills sounds like the business we're in. What do you think? Also - do we have a slack chat somewhere? - Donna > Submissions regarding the Draft Senior Science Australian Curriculum > close **tomorrow**. > > This article in today's age made me think... > http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/science-subject-comes-under-fire-20120718-22alp.html > > Hang on - Where's computer science? Oh that's right it doesn't exist in > the brave new world of the new Australian Curriculum. It's a general > capability (ICT) or a "Technology" along with design, woodworking, > cooking and agriculture - in a strand called "Digital Technologies" > > I've been to a couple of Google sponsored workshops advocating for the > promotion and redevelopment of computer science in high school. #CS4HS > > So I have some thoughts on this. Perhaps you do too? > > You have less than 24 hours to make a submission with your thoughts. > > The draft curriculum is here: > http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Info+Sheet+-+Draft+Senior > +Secondary+Science+FINAL.pdf > (and hopefully attached) > > Email submissions to Science at acara.edu.au > > Make sure to use this cover sheet > http://consultation.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Static/docs/Senior% > 20Secondary/Senior%20Secondary%20feedback%20cover%20sheet.docx > > docx ? Oh no. Ok. I will attempt to attach it converted to odt. > > More info here: > http://consultation.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ > > please redistribute or agitate, as you see fit. > > cheers > Donna > -- > Donna Benjamin - Executive Director > Creative Contingencies - http://cc.com.au > ph +61 3 9326 9985 - mob +61 418 310 414 -- Donna Benjamin Project Lead Catalyst IT Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne, Australia mobile: +61 418 310 414 phone: +61 3 9020 5761 email: donna at catalyst-au.net web: https://www.catalyst-au.net