IT knowledge is as important as Maths, says UK.gov Digital literacy must become a core subject in schools – just like maths – in order to mitigate the effects of mass job automation, a House of Lords report has warned. The Digital Skills Committee said the "UK is at a tipping point" in addressing its "significant digital skills shortage". It said this was particularly …
Why will anyone need Powerpoint, if their boss was replaced with a 4 line script there will be nobody to present to. Given that we are in the process of replacing the vast majority of IT workers with automation this seems a very short sighted policy. Of course, government could easily be replaced with a secure phone app where the public votes directly on issues so they may be the first to go in the new regime. The only question is how to ensure the public are informed before they can click the voting buttons. Perhaps a short online test :)
Yes, teachers and schools really do believe that office admin tasks, if done in a Microsoft Office app, qualify as IT and Computing. When visiting on a parent evening, don't tell their IT teacher that you are an IT professional with a related degree. They go coy.
Luckily at my son's school there are some decent non-teachers who go in and do the proper stuff under the "STEM Lecture" theme.
" an IT professional with a related degree."
I like the qualification of IT professional. Unfortunately there are a large amount of IT professionals who only really have knowledge of looking at PowerPoint slides and do not have any interest in IT, technology or sorting algorithms.
Then maybe the government should start penalizing businesses that outsource to low-wage economies and stop allowing a flood of low-grade immigrants coming to work here cratering the ability to live on an IT wage and pay your inflated mortgages.
IT pay has been static for over ten years, now they wonder why nobody wants to get into the business?
El Reg: Baroness Morgan, chair of the committee, said from an early age digital literacy must be given as much importance as numeracy and literacy.
That's not what the report actually says. It actually says "digital and technology skills should be considered complementary to numeracy and literacy."
In my dictionary, complementary does not mean "has equal priority".
El Reg:: "The report also suggests that the internet is given the same importance as any other utility"
Once again. That's not what the report says. It actually says The Government should make it its ambition to ensure universal access for the entire population.
That's quite a long way from suggesting that fresh drinking water and not dying from hypothermia are no more important than getting some Facebook updates.
I have provided everyone in the class with a wallet full of monopoly money. Now we are going to practice how to use computers. Form a line at my desk and hand over all of the money in the wallet and I will give you a white box with an Apple logo. It is important for you all to have these Skillz later in life.
Tomorrow, we are going to learn how to program. This will consist of the following modules:
1) Opening notepad
2) Entering 5 lines of HTML
3) Saving the file with a .htm extension
4) Opening the file in a web browser
Once you have mastered these skills, the politicians of the day will think you are a programmer. Extra marks will be available for those who use special tags to make at least three words bold or italic on the page. Changing colours and typefaces is an advanced topic and will not be covered in this course.
1999/2000, Open University course at Bath University. I ended up teaching half the class web design as I had more experience than the lecturer who was teaching that module.
My page was a bit more advanced than "changing colours and typefaces" though :)
Surely the way to ensure a important knowledge and progress is made is to keep it out of the hands of the public sector and so out of the hands of these government types? I have yet to find a teacher who thinks these meddling know nothings having direct influence over day to day running is a good idea.
"the committee doubted whether teachers currently have the ability to deliver relevant digital skills."
This is the crux of the problem, but it runs deeper than that.
For many years, the government paid teachers peanuts and they got monkeys. So they increased the salaries and now they've got well-paid monkeys. There are some very good and hard working teachers, but they are outnumbered 10 to1 by utter morons.
The teaching vocation needs to turned into a profession. It needs to be purged of low-grade arts graduates who are quite frankly not fit to teach our children. I'm talking about the militant kind who go on strikes and marches when asked to teach times tables, and the touchy-feely kind who mollycoddle the kids and get all upset when asked test the little darlings in order to monitor their progress.
There is no point in asking these worthless assholes to teach digital skills. They don't have the intelligence for it. That's why the current initiative, admirable though it is, of teaching kids programming is doomed to failure.
The limit of the teachers digital ability is posting misspelled drivel on facebook. The kids can figure out how to post it on facebook and twitter and the teacher thinks it's wonderful how clever they are to do that.
/rant
> John, most modern programmers couldn't tell you what a pointer is anyway
Let alone a core block or forward-chain reference on a 4K disk block! Essential skills (when doing assembler on an IBM mainframe..)
Yes - sarcasm. Because lots of languages don't use the specific technology that you are referring to. Just like they don't use Entry Control Blocks and core-store..
"assembler on an IBM mainframe.."
You get an upvote for that alone. I thought it was just me.
When I realised that all this "Pass by reference or pass by value" bollocks was just a new way of saying "does the register contain the value or the address of the value?" I mentally slapped my forehead.
"When I realised that all this "Pass by reference or pass by value" bollocks was just a new way of saying "does the register contain the value or the address of the value?" I mentally slapped my forehead."
It doesn't mean that. You need to get down off that pedestal and go and learn about some other programming languages.
PS Your pedestal says "twat".
Being able to use a computer has become just about as important as being able to read and write. However, in this context, the requirement is to be able to use a computer, not manage it.
What is needed, IMHO, is computer literacy in primary schools. After that, it should just become a part of other lessons, just as it has become an integral part of most jobs.
IT lessons could then focus on more advanced topics than using Word and Excel, just as English lessons so not stick with just how to read and write.
If we continue to teach word processing and spreadsheets as a separate subject, people will continue to see computing as separate, which is not how the world of work operates. A computer is just a tool (as are most users, FNAR FNAR), just like a pen and paper.
"What is needed, IMHO, is computer literacy in primary schools"
Top plan. Perhaps someone (maybe the BBC) should start a computer literacy project. Perhaps they could even 'make' their own computer to help in this project, and widely distribute it to schools. A TV series would help too, I'd deffo suggest 'Computer World' by kraftwerk for the theme tune. How about an owl for a logo?
that there is no definition in the reports I have heard and seen saying just what 'IT' means...
I'm old enough to remember being offered (and turning down) 'Computing' lessons at school which would have been more properly entitled 'Data Entry Clerk' lessons.
These days the equivalent seems to still be Data Entry Clerk except that instead of a VT102, it's all Excel and Word (other office suites are available, but need not apply).
Whereas IT skills covers everything from basic physics/electronics through to network topology and queueing theory, RF distribution models, IC design, schematic capture and layout design, construction methods, logic, interface design, knowledge of a whole bunch of protocols and programming languages, formal proof, database management, distributed systems, intrusion detection *and* microsoft solitaire. Seems a bit mean to expect kids to learn all that at the same time they're failing to learn English and Maths.
@launcap
Indeed. There's a difference between learning to drive, learning how to operate the machines that make a car, knowing the metalurgy to deal with what a car is made of, knowing the regulations under which a car should operate, and indeed learning to strip an engine and replace the main bearings.
I strongly suspect that what is being touted as 'IT skills' is firmly in the 'learning to drive' class and to be honest that should be in the learning to write and spell, and maths at the 'adds, takeaways, timeses, and guzintas' level. Though looking at current GCSE, that's where they are coming *out* of secondary school, while I can't help feeling it should be what they know on the way *in*.
Anyone else notice the 'hinderance' (sic) from the Head of GDS User Research's tweet on the GOV.UK. thread?
in high school consisted of using ClarisWorks.
I also got suspended once for "hacking" the school network and "crashing the systems". The IT manager said he had to stay in all weekend to fix it.
All I tried to do was copy a 50mb video file from a network share to my local folder as the connection was too slow to stream it.
I wonder if IT standards have improved since then.
Only hacking we did at school was cutting the slots out of one side of the floppy disks to make them double sided. Not one kid at our school ever paid for the double sided disks after it was discovered that all disks were actually double sided and all you were paying for was the number of holes in the plastic casing...
I had two experiences with IT at school.
The first was exemplified by a dispute between myself and the "IT teacher" (actually a French teacher they drafted in for the lessons). During one lesson, we were told we could earn extra marks by answering a question. If we knew the answer, we were to go to her desk when called and answer.
The question: "What is a RAM disk?"
I answered with words along the lines of "A virtual disk emulated in the computer's RAM". She replied, "No, it's Random Access Memory". A short debate (cough) occurred between us over definitions involved, ending with me being told I wasn't welcome in her class because I was not prepared to learn.
The second was much different. This was later, and all the computer labs had been upgraded to PCs. I grew bored with the endless stream of typing exercises and mind-numbing spreadsheet tasks asked of us. I therefore set about, erm, unlocking certain locked down features within the NT4 environment. I gained access to Explorer, messaging clients, games and several others which were (supposedly) unavailable. All very trivial, and I never did anything even remotely malicious, but it passed the time.
The IT teacher (actually a Physics teacher, but at least he had a basic grasp of computing) caught me, and took me to see the sysadmin. We chatted for a while and, instead of punishing me for "hacking", he did the sensible thing: Asked me for help. I proceeded to lock down everything I had discovered the correct way, and in return he allowed me an admin account (to help him in future, not to install and play games *cough*). We became friends, and still are to this day.
The French teacher was probably embarrassed at her lack of in-depth IT knowledge but reacted poorly as a result. There is a good example of a teacher having to teach something that is not their core subject - this is not the fault of the teacher but is a lack of teaching resource / money.
The Physics teacher made the right call taking you to the expert and not just bollocking you there and then. The sysadmin was of course a decent IT professional who knew a good resource when they saw one...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
