The Old Person’s ICT Curriculum

Posted on | January 8, 2007 | 10 Comments

John Naughton captures perfectly the complete mismatch between those who still believe that the concept of the centrally-determined curriculum is valid and those who know that the factory-fodder notion of the curriculum should be buried. His description of the earnest, but wholly redundant, attempt by the QCA to outline an ICT curriculum is wicked – and completely justified!

“There’s a surreal quality to the QCA’s ICT curriculum. It conjures up images of kids up and down the country trudging into ICT classes and being taught how to use a mouse and click on hyperlinks; receiving solemn instructions in the creation of documents using Microsoft Word and of spreadsheets using Excel; being taught how to create a toy database using Access and a cod PowerPoint presentation; and generally being bored out of their minds.

And then the same kids go home and log onto Bebo or MySpace to update their profiles, run half a dozen simultaneous Instant Messaging conversations, use Skype to make free phone calls, rip music from CDs they”ve borrowed from friends, twiddle their thumbs to send incomprehensible text messages, view silly videos on YouTube and use BitTorrent to download episodes of “Lost”.”

Technorati Tags: qca, ict curriculum, john naughton, observer

Category: curriculum, education, ict

Comments

10 Responses to “The Old Person’s ICT Curriculum”

David Gilmour
January 8th, 2007 @ 10:08 am

You didn’t mention the title of John Naughton’s piece: “Welcome to IT class, children; log on and be bored stiff”. This curriculum is why my S2 son, normally enthusiastic about computers, dreads his school IT classes.

I was reminded of New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra’s experiment with a hole-in-the-wall PC.

“To test his ideas, Mitra 13 months ago launched something he calls “the hole in the wall experiment.” He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT’s headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company’s grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree.

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.”

Maybe for basic skills the best thing is for children to teach themselves in this way as and when they need them?
John Connell
January 8th, 2007 @ 10:29 pm

A great story, David, and one that I might use in the occasional presentation in the future. Hope you don’t mind
Tony Loughland
January 9th, 2007 @ 12:54 am

it must be the bleak scottish weather, Mr Connell, but you’ve been a little on the bleak side in 2007. The computer competencies stuff did make me smile wryly, however. I remember the NSW DET trialing a computer assessment for year six a few years back and the instruction s said to type in Times New Roman: a passage of text. So some students typed in the words Times New Roman!
This low level stuff has been replicated in the 2006 Year 10 comuter skills assessment where the DET boasted that 97% of all students passed at the competent level- or what passes for competent in their test.

The drab computer skills student outcomes are reflected in the professional teaching standard for ICT in NSW that focuses on, at the graduate teacher level, basic operational skills, IT skills,software evaluation skills, effective use of the internet and pedagogical skills for classroom management (whateva that is).
Joe Wilson
January 9th, 2007 @ 4:57 pm

I completely agree on one level.
Pupils and teachers need to be empowered more to design the curriculum – and if basic tools are not explored properly then they can be really boring – but caveat.

If you can’t manage wordprocessing packages, spreadsheets, presentations and probably databases of some kind then you are going to struggle to make it in the current employment market.
But there is a time and a place for this and a place for using loads more tools.

If the curriculum is structured or taught in boring way – that’s the issue – skills in these areas are cool ones to have – along with the rest

If you chuck out public national curriculum – we will be left with those set by global vendors especially in IT areas – one brand will simply replace another. We can have more regularly refreshed national frameworks- learners and teachers need a framework of somekind.
Gail Dyer
January 10th, 2007 @ 11:24 pm

Peer tutoring is a most powerful method. The student( teacher )is testing his/her knowledge everytime he helps another. Often children understand explanations of concepts / skills explained by their peers better than explanations by their teacher. As educators we need to observe our students and in this time of rapid ICT changes listen to our students and allow ourselves to learn from them. Is it really important for a structured set of skills to be taught or do we negotiate just in time learning which means the students are asking as they need or you as an educator judge they need certain skills to proceed with their learning and development. The students and their use of technolgy never ceases to amaze me.
Weekly Links (14 January 2007) at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk
January 14th, 2007 @ 11:47 am

[...] John Connell – The Old Person’s ICT Curriculum (illustrates the anachronism that is the ICT curriculum in the UK given today’s ‘natives’) [...]
Sicheii Yazhi » Blog Archive » Important Things Require Vigilance
January 14th, 2007 @ 10:29 pm

[...] Despite all these goals, I don’t want to become a “technology teacher,” whatever that might mean. First of all, it seems that most of the “how to” of these tech tools can be picked up through play and require little direct instruction. Instead, I want to introduce helpful tools to students, suggest ways that they can be used to increase their ability to learn, and then bring it all back around to what’s important (see below). Secondly, what I do understand of School 2.0 seems to be “about the pedagogy,” not about the tools themselves. In the words of Jeff Utecht: School 2.0 needs to be about creating knowledge, analyzing information, and evaluating both. It’s about understanding a world in which connections and communicating with others is at the foundation of how we learn, that through creating our own knowledge not from what a teacher tells us, but rather from what we read, listen to, and watch ourselves is far more powerful. A teacher is a guide … answer questions when we have them, and stay out of the way when we want to experience something ourselves. [...]
Seems Like Teaching » Important Things Require Vigilance
January 14th, 2007 @ 10:32 pm

[...] Despite all these goals, I don’t want to become a “technology teacher,” whatever that might mean.Â First of all, it seems that most of the “how to” of these tech tools can be picked up through play and require little direct instruction.Â Instead, I want to introduce helpful tools to students, suggest ways that they can be used to increase their ability to learn, and then bring it all back around to what’s important (see below).Â Secondly, what I do understand of School 2.0 seems to be “about the pedagogy,” not about the tools themselves.Â In the words of Jeff Utecht: School 2.0 needs to be about creating knowledge, analyzing information, and evaluating both. It’s about understanding a world in which connections and communicating with others is at the foundation of how we learn, that through creating our own knowledge not from what a teacher tells us, but rather from what we read, listen to, and watch ourselves is far more powerful. A teacher is a guide … answer questions when we have them, and stay out of the way when we want to experience something ourselves. [...]
Mr Smith
January 16th, 2007 @ 2:38 pm

You are all absolutely right, the current ICT curriculum is boring and uninspiring. When kids are interested in something it is almost impossible to stop them finding out how to do something. The solution to the National Curriculum is therefore obvious, give them a task or project that makes them to want to find out how to solve any problems they come across.
Important Things Require Vigilance | EricHoefler.com
March 2nd, 2009 @ 11:31 pm

[...] want to become a “technology teacher,” whatever that might mean. First of all, it seems that most of the “how to” of these tech tools can be picked up through play and require [...]