"Coding" in schools...

padd b1975 wrote: »

An ECDL type course is probably adequate at this level.

While laudable as an initiative, logistically it's going to be very difficult to implement as outlined earlier in the thread.
It could be a financial black hole to get up and running to the detriment of other subjects and students.

Content of ECDL isn't worth a ****e.

Critical thinking / problem solving with patterns of computation will make a huge difference to anyone working in most fields from now on.

Would love to have been in school when this is brought in. Great benefit for students imo

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

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Permabear wrote: »

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I was one of those. Got a ZX Spectrum as a reward for doing well in my Inter Cert (still have it - it's over there in the corner :cool: ) and the took the "computing" module while studying for the Leaving Cert. Our Maths teacher was a crazy fecker who crucified us with impossible exam questions that he'd dragged out of obscure places - I averaged about 10% on in-class spot tests - but that same craziness (and small class size) meant his computer classes were great.

But none of that was relevant to my career plan. I was doing Honours Maths because I was aiming for a high-points degree, and the computing was just a hobby.

Roll on ten years, degree in pocket, out working in the real world and "IT" is starting to infect the workplace. All of a sudden, that "messing about with computers" gave me a distinct advantage over my peers, because I could better integrate it into the day-to-day functioning of our workplace.

Without meaning to be a pioneer, when I set up on my own, I was one of the first in my sector to have a website (because why wouldn't you?) and even though I've moved onwards, upwards, sidewards, etcwards, my mid-90s design is still one of the freshest and most "interactive" in that field.

Similarly, I bought proprietary software for our general use, and kept regular contact with the developer so that we could tailor it to our needs. I was in the UK at the time, but when the Euro went live, an e-mail to the developer saw it appear on our till screen as a payment option. We were the only business in our area to offer this.

And I canibalised a bunch of O'Reilly HTML and javascript samples to built an on-screen quiz to test our work-experience students on how much they'd learnt during their time with us. Again, the sector has nothing to do with "IT" but our use of it meant we sent our w/ex students back to school with a unique evaluation that none of their peers received.

So I'm a firm believer that coding/computers/IT/whatever you want to call it, is as much a key skill as maths and language.

But for that same reason, I think it's probably too late to wait till children have arrived in secondary school before exposing them to it, and it's definitely a bad idea to make it a "subject" that's supposed to lead towards a career in the computer/IT industry.

Permabear wrote: »

I'd suggest that setting up primary schools with cheap Linux computers like Raspberry Pis, and encouraging kids to play and experiment, might have a greater long-term benefit than introducing computer science for the Leaving Cert curriculum when the students are about 16.

Exactly. Teens in general have an enormous range of interests, most of which on the face of it wouldn't seem to have anything to do with IT. They need to come into secondary school knowing that, yeah sure, you can tap a few buttons on your 200€ smartphone, shove it in a tree and leave it to make a timelapse video, but it would be much more sensible to couple that old point-and-shoot camera with a Pi and a cheap solar panel to do the same. The fact that they'll have to learn a little bit of Python to make it work is just a detail, and doesn't need to be hard-wired into the LC curriculum.

5 pages and not a mention of Documentation or Software Testing :pac:

Raspberry Pi based projects would be interesting to do in school

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Thanks to computer things the three R's are less relevant nowadays.

Writing has been replaced to some extent by email.
Audio books are more of a thing as voice recognition.
Arithmetic , well everyone has a calculator on their phone.

And over here it's Maths (plural )
and of course it's much more than arithmetic.

In fairness, you still need how to communicate via written words in order to send an eamil, you still need to be able to read as not everything is audio recorded (how often do you recieve bills or tv guides, for example, in audio format?) and you still need to know how to type commands into a claculator. No point knowing how to press the numerical buttons if you don't know what the different numbers and symols mean!

People shouldn't be let into secondary without the basics. It just wastes resources later trying to catch up later on. The level of maths in many third level students for STEM courses is abysmal. First year in many courses contains a large part of learning stuff that should have been done in secondary.

I'd agree with you here, but it's going off topic a wee bit.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I've never seen so much shỉt posted on one thread.

You're not on boards much so ...

jimgoose wrote: »

Python is an elegant, non-threatening programming language that is also reasonably powerful and full-featured. Dip in here:

https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/NonProgrammers

Might be non threatening to beginners but when I had some experience of a language or 2 and then come across this mine field of tabs (tab != 4*space), I felt very threatened. Joking aside. Python is pretty cool!