[Yr7-10it] VELS and IT

[Michelle Dennis]

One thing that I am constantly sharing with my students is the idea of
RIRO (Rubbish in, Rubbish out).   Computers can do amazing things, but
they still can't tell what you 'really mean' or read your mind.  They
take what you do, and do things with it to produce the output.  You need
to be exact with computers, be logical.  So often, students complain
that 'the computer is broken' when it's really a problem with the
input/procedure that the student is using.  That's why it so often
occurs that a student will say that something doesn't work, but when I
ask them to show me what they were doing, it'll suddenly 'be fixed'.

I think this is where the benefit of teaching a basic programming
language or procedure is.  The debugging process really underlines the
concept of input-processing-output.  All it takes is a missing 'end', a
semi-colon where there shouldn't be one, the wrong type of bracket, and
it won't work!  

Michelle Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Dr Paul Chandler [mailto:yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au] On
Behalf Of Dr Paul Chandler
Sent: Sunday, 11 June 2006 10:32 PM
To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: RE: [Yr7-10it] VELS and IT

In an earlier post, I suggested that what we need, first of all, some
vigorous discussion, some postulates, of what are some conceptual
understandings which 'really matter' - those that 'the better' computer
users have that 'the strugglers' don't yet have.

In this context, Tony Forster observed:

> Imagine that its 1986, you are learning Wordstar on DOS or CPM. With
the
> wisdom of hindsight, what are the generalised, higher order skills
which
> will  still be useful in 2006? More importantly, how would you have
> recognised them back in 1986? If you can answer that, then you are on
the
> way to knowing what is important to teach now.

Thanks, Tony.  Interesting stuff to think about ... my thoughts for the
moment ...

Not everyone on the list will be able to date themselves back to
Wordstar in 1986 (I can only just do so).  The things that were true
then which seem to be true now are:
- the document and program you are working in, exists within an
'external context' (hardware, operating system and filing system).  So
that, if you turn off your computer before saving your work, it's gone;
if you type long enough, you'll make a document too big for the computer
to handle, and you'll probably lose it; if you don't have your printer
turned on and plugged in, printing will be either lost or be in
jibberish; etc etc
- if you select chunks of text they can be manipulated in various ways;
these 'various ways' include its location in the document and format

Anymore contributions, anyone?

Now, I'm not sure that we need to back-track into history all the time
to identify 'key concepts', but sometimes it might sharpen our thinking.
For instance, in the early days of the Macintosh, the word processor
MacWrite had a concept of 'inserting a ruler' and certain formatting
applied from that ruler until the next ruler encountered.  MS Word (and
possibly wordperfect before it) gave us the idea of a paragraph as a
'grouping' of certain formatting options.  The fact that the MacWrite
idea has largely gone by the board does not change the fact that 'the
ruler' was a vital concept for those who were using it at that the time.
I don't think the 'important concepts' have to have extreme longevity,
but they need to be applicable to how we are working now.


-----Original Message-----
From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Tony Forster
Sent: Sat 6/10/2006 11:09 PM
To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Yr7-10it] VELS and IT
 
> I'm teaching "about IT", I find it _really_ hard to move beyond
knowledge.
> To do things such as summarize, describe, interpret, apply,
demonstrate,
> calculate, analyze, separate, order, explain, connect, classify,
combine,
> integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, assess, decide, rank, grade,

> test,
> measure, or recommend ... All the "higher order" skills is just so
hard.
> I'd suggest that this is because we are too bothered with ensuring
that 
> the
> students have "the skills" rather than "the concepts".  If we were
> orientated towards "concepts", then then higher order stuff would come
> easier.

Imagine that its 1986, you are learning Wordstar on DOS or CPM. With the

wisdom of hindsight, what are the generalised, higher order skills which

will  still be useful in 2006? More importantly, how would you have 
recognised them back in 1986? If you can answer that, then you are on
the 
way to knowing what is important to teach now. 

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