computer science on the LC

irishguy

Has anyone heard if computer science is being brought in as a leaving/junior cert subject?

jetsonx

for a country which relies significantly on IT for its GDP I am surprised myself
they never introduced it on the curriculm. I would suspect its down to a
combination of a chronic shortage of teachers who also know the science subjects. Teaching has always attacted the "Arts" type students.

Ri_Nollaig

irishguy wrote:

Has anyone heard if computer science is being brought in as a leaving/junior cert subject?

i remember thinking the same when i was doing the leaving...
infact im doing comp sci now
they do teach it in american high schools, guess the best we get is the ecdl which if your school was anyway like mine, most didnt finish anyway! and is nothing along the lines of programing etc
i am very surprised they dont teach it, it would also work in nicely with maths higher and lower and might get more people interested or atleast more aware of what courses like bis or computer science are actually like.
guess as jetsonx said there is just an shortage of science teachers

irishguy

It was offered in two schools in Limerick when i was doing my LC 5 years ago (Christ i am getting old) it wasent official but UL accepted it dont know that much about it as i did not do it.
I just heard in college that is was being brought in as an LC subject and they were looking for computer science students to teach it. I am just interested in correcting papers during the summer, handy few quid.

Delphi91

Have a look at this discussion when the rumour surfaced a few months back:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054857238

Mike

P.S. It's still offered in Limerick!

pbarry

Luckily my school ran a HTML course for 5th/6th years. Other than that the only exposure to IT most students in my school had was 40min a week in a cramped computer lab learning how to type!! Again, the only reason the HTML course took off was because the teacher was into computers. So it all comes down to the skills of teachers.

rainbow kirby

It still shocks me that CS isn't a Leaving Cert subject. There's definitely a place for a well-structured introductory level course at Leaving Cert, for example with basics of Java/C++ up to the level of introductory data structures (linked lists/queues etc), with some web design stuff, and with some hardware and networks stuff too. The problem, as stated before, would be finding teachers. And what's the odds of it ever being taught in an all-girls school? *remembers physics and chemistry classes of less than 10 students*

irishguy

rainbow kirby wrote:

It still shocks me that CS isn't a Leaving Cert subject. There's definitely a place for a well-structured introductory level course at Leaving Cert, for example with basics of Java/C++ up to the level of introductory data structures (linked lists/queues etc), with some web design stuff, and with some hardware and networks stuff too. The problem, as stated before, would be finding teachers. And what's the odds of it ever being taught in an all-girls school? *remembers physics and chemistry classes of less than 10 students*

Just retrain IT graduates there are loads of them

4Xcut

jetsonx wrote:

Teaching has always attacted the "Arts" type students.

you mean bums!:D

jetsonx

well yes to a certain extent ! Teaching is one of those jobs that people seem to drift into... I am not saying in way that teaching is an easy job btw.

cianclarke

I'd love to see it brought in, but let's face it - if it is brought in chances are it'l be a farce of a course, and you're going to need a teacher who's actually *into* the subject...
Still, nice thing to see - I'm going to be doing comp. sci at uni' so it'd be a handy few quid correcting papers as somebody said.