[Year 12 SofDev] Re: Industry practice - tertiary links
Russell Quinn
QN at boxhillhs.vic.edu.au
Fri Apr 18 15:24:08 EST 2008
The first thing would be inclined to do is throw out all of the networking -
which is totally irrelevant to software development (except to a small and
select few specialists) and replace it with actual software development.
I also think the obsession with the business models should be downplayed,
and the scenario's broadened to something far more interesting. After all, business
is just one of the reasons for writing software, and not a very interesting one at that.
It appears that students are voting with their feet, and I can see their point.
The only way to plug the leak is to make the courses software based and
interesting.
Russell Quinn
Mailto: qn at boxhillhs.vic.edu.au
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Industry practice - tertiary links (Steven Bird)
2. RE: Industry practice - tertiary links (Selina Dennis)
3. Re: Industry practice - tertiary links (Mark Kelly)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:00:37 +1000
From: "Steven Bird" <sb at csse.unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links
To: "Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List"
<sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Message-ID:
<97e4e62e0804171400q6bf98a9fq3acd059906fe980 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Timmer-Arends <timmer at melbpc.org.au> wrote:
> I have to say that this discussion is heading to Comp Sci circa 1990 (which
> is not necessarily a bad thing)
Well, CS an obvious source of theory for an IT subject. The theory on
which VCE Physics and Chemistry is based is older still, but no-one
considers that dated.
> but it seems to me that a couple of
> questions need to be answered first:
> 1. what do we want students to get out of a technically-oriented Y12 IT course?
> 2. is the course primarily intended to prepare students for teritary, work, or both?
Another conceivable answer to q2 is that it is foundational study,
preparing students for whatever they choose to do in future, even if
it involves no formal IT study or employment.
For the students continuing from VCE Software Development to a degree
in Software Engineering, we would prefer students to have a solid
grounding in algorithmic problem solving and the associated
programming skills. (The SDLC follows naturally once they're ready to
scale up.)
-Steven
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:09:16 +1000
From: "Selina Dennis" <selina at dennis.net.au>
Subject: RE: [Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links
To: "'Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List'"
<sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Message-ID: <003801c8a0d7$aed8dd80$0c8a9880$@net.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I am both a Year 12 Software Development teacher and a Computer Science
graduate - I completed my CS degree late in life, circa 2005 - and as
someone who has worked in the IT industry since 1996, I must say that I
concur with Steven Bird's view that there is a chasm between secondary
school teaching of IT and tertiary teaching of IT. For students in Year 12,
the key components of software development that they will "get the most out
of", is the theory behind algorithms, problem solving, and also the
development of their basic thinking skills. I've been teaching PHP/mySQL to
my students this year and while most have come into the course having
completed Year 10 and 11 IT, they still did not have a basic understanding
of fundamental programming concepts at the start of the year.
Perhaps this is more of a "theological" discussion on how to teach
programming to teenagers, but it's also relevant to note that much of the
theory that is being taught in Year 12 is rarely used or developed in either
tertiary study or in industry. One such example is diagrams - N-S Diagrams,
DFDs, etc have long been superseded by UML, both at a university level and
in industry - as an aside, I had never heard of NS diagrams until I had to
teach it in IPM, and I had worked with ISO-9000 compliant corporations
developing major software products.
Similarly, the SDLC, as Steven has raised, is most useful for large-scale
projects. Students will rarely experience the benefit, nor the relevance, of
the SDLC, in a secondary school curriculum. More useful theory would be a
more focused look at iterative design, extreme programming (or any other
kind of agile software development), etc, and move away from the excessive
documentation requirements that the SDLC brings to the table.
As a teacher, I would prefer to bring in key aspects of the SDLC without
having to formally teach every part of it. For example, a concentration on
testing and debugging of software - this is a twofold benefit, as it teaches
students to be aware of how they choose to implement functionality, and also
develops their analytical and observational skills when they are debugging
an error. Bringing in Use Case Diagrams instead of DFDs would be fantastic,
also, as it conceptually allows a student to think through what they are
providing in their system before they develop it.
In general, however, I have to say I am currently much happier with the core
content of the Software Development course than I was with the IT:
Applications course, but I still believe that it is, at its core, dated and
at times irrelevant. In a perfect world, we would be teaching our students
"good practice" programming while also preparing them for a future path in
IT if they so choose - both at the tertiary level and in industry.
</soapbox>
Regards,
Selina Dennis
Strathmore Secondary College
-----Original Message-----
From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au]
On Behalf Of Steven Bird
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 7:01 AM
To: Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Timmer-Arends <timmer at melbpc.org.au> wrote:
> I have to say that this discussion is heading to Comp Sci circa 1990
(which
> is not necessarily a bad thing)
Well, CS an obvious source of theory for an IT subject. The theory on
which VCE Physics and Chemistry is based is older still, but no-one
considers that dated.
> but it seems to me that a couple of
> questions need to be answered first:
> 1. what do we want students to get out of a technically-oriented Y12 IT
course?
> 2. is the course primarily intended to prepare students for teritary,
work, or both?
Another conceivable answer to q2 is that it is foundational study,
preparing students for whatever they choose to do in future, even if
it involves no formal IT study or employment.
For the students continuing from VCE Software Development to a degree
in Software Engineering, we would prefer students to have a solid
grounding in algorithmic problem solving and the associated
programming skills. (The SDLC follows naturally once they're ready to
scale up.)
-Steven
_______________________________________________
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IT Software Development Mailing List kindly supported by
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority
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http://www.vitta.org.au/vce/studies/infotech/softwaredevel3-4.html - VITTA
Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:20:04 +1000
From: Mark Kelly <kel at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links
To: "Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List"
<sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Message-ID: <4807CD14.8060002 at mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Yes - and we have to position VCE against VET, which is the more
practical, work-oriented stream.
Frankly, I can't see SD being directly useful in providing students with
workplace skills. It's simply not deep enough in programming skills -
and it could never be in the time available. And by the time the kids
took the tram from school to their first job, the entire IT industry
would have had three technological revolutions in the meantime, so any
language they learned would have been superseded.
I see SD as giving students a taste of the mindset of software
development, to be developed later at uni or TAFE.
2.2c worth, and falling against the Yen.
Timmer-Arends wrote:
> I have to say that this discussion is heading to Comp Sci circa 1990 (which
> is not necessarily a bad thing) but it seems to me that a couple of
> questions need to be answered first:
> 1. what do we want students to get out of a technically-oriented Y12 IT
> course?
> 2. is the course primarily intended to prepare students for teritary,
> work, or both?
>
> Regards
> Robert T-A
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven Bird" <sb at csse.unimelb.edu.au>
> To: "Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List"
> <sofdev at edulists.com.au>
> Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Industry practice - tertiary links
>
>
>> [Adrian -- thanks for picking a more appropriate subject line now that
>> discussion has moved away from data flow diagrams.]
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 7:28 PM, andrew barry <jagguy999 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> I prefer to just teach an IT subject which is just programming and some
>>> programming design eg psuedo code.
>>
>> I agree. Students should learn how to walk before learning how to
>> run, i.e. they should be competent with "programming in-the-small"
>> before they spend much time on "programming in-the-large" (incl SDLC).
>>
>>> Including so much theory doesn't get any student excited about learning
>>> IT
>>> at Uni. After all we are trying to promote IT beyond yr12 are we not?
>>> Are
>>> we
>>> not trying to get more people to do it?
>>
>> I agree with Adrian that rigour is important, and this cuts across
>> analysis, design, implementation, documentation, etc. The SDLC is one
>> source of theory but I question its suitability at this level. It's
>> intended for software engineering projects where you have to manage
>> whole teams of developers, client relationships, project deliverables,
>> etc. When students aren't already experienced at small-scale
>> programming the emphasis often falls on a rather heavy document
>> process, which has to be one of the least exciting aspects of software
>> development.
>>
>> Another issue I have with the emphasis on SDLC as a major source of
>> theoretical content is that it focusses too much on the software
>> development process. Of course that's entirely appropriate given the
>> title of the subject, but there's some other areas of computing theory
>> that would be useful and accessible at this level, including
>> algorithmic problem solving and the limits of computing. Here's a
>> couple of introductory books that cover these topics in a
>> non-mathematical yet rigorous and intellectually stimulating way:
>>
>> Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing (3rd Ed, David Harel, Addison
>> Wesley, 2004)
>>
>> Computers Ltd: What They Really Can't Do (David Harel, Oxford
>> University Press, 2000)
>>
>> -Steven Bird
>> http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~sb/
>> _______________________________________________
>> http://www.edulists.com.au
>> IT Software Development Mailing List kindly supported by
>> http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au - Victorian Curriculum and Assessment
>> Authority
>> and
>> http://www.vitta.org.au/vce/studies/infotech/softwaredevel3-4.html -
>> VITTA Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association Inc
--
Mark Kelly
Manager - Information Systems
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria, Australia
Direct line / Voicemail: 8520 9085
School Phone +613 8520 9000
School Fax +613 95789253
kel AT mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
Webmaster - http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
IT Lecture notes: http://vceit.com
Moderator: IT Applications Mailing List
A conclusion is the place where you got sick of thinking.
If you Declare War - is it integer or boolean?
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