IT in its current guise has been becoming increasingly irrelevant. It might have meant something to learn how to use Word et al 15-20 years ago, when not everyone had a computer at home or whatever. These days, my 5 year old asks me if she can do some typing on my Mac... If she continues on that sort of trajectory, then IT GCSE as it currently stands would be completely worthless to her come 16.
I.T. lessons in PowerPoint to be scrapped
- Thread starter NathanE
- Start date
and know that Comic Sans should be the font of choice for every situation, no matter how serious.
The best April fools joke this year could well be the forum being set to use Comic Sans as the default font for the day lol.
About time... IT GCSE was such a ridiculous piece of tosh... It did it in 2009, and remember having to learn the pros and cons of dot matrix printers and floppy discs lol. Then the questions... 'what does RAM stand for?' *list of retarded abbreviations*, which field has been incorrectly filled out in this form? *Age: Accountant* etc...
It was the most thoroughly boring syllabus and coursework (although I suppose the coursework made you use your knowledge of MS office to solve a specific problem and made you explain your decisions etc so wasn't just about using MS office) I have ever had the displeasure of being student to.
This new course sounds great, wish they'd done this years ago!
edit: bahaha after counting up the marks on questions I got right and finding it satisfactory, I remember spending the last 1/2 an hour of the exam filling up the last couple of pages of my exam with drawings of tanks, and writing a short letter to the examiner asking for an A*... They obliged.
edit2: This is the exam I took: http://www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/QP Current GCSE/June 2009/1185_2H_que_20090519.pdf
It actually seems to have more content and stuff that I had to remember than I remember it having, but still, what a rubbish GCSE.
It was the most thoroughly boring syllabus and coursework (although I suppose the coursework made you use your knowledge of MS office to solve a specific problem and made you explain your decisions etc so wasn't just about using MS office) I have ever had the displeasure of being student to.
This new course sounds great, wish they'd done this years ago!
edit: bahaha after counting up the marks on questions I got right and finding it satisfactory, I remember spending the last 1/2 an hour of the exam filling up the last couple of pages of my exam with drawings of tanks, and writing a short letter to the examiner asking for an A*... They obliged.
edit2: This is the exam I took: http://www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/QP Current GCSE/June 2009/1185_2H_que_20090519.pdf
It actually seems to have more content and stuff that I had to remember than I remember it having, but still, what a rubbish GCSE.
Last edited:
As a frustrated ICT Teacher the news this morning has made me very happy indeed. I am looking forward to teaching something more interesting, I want to stab myself in the eye most days rather than deliver the subject I am forced into.
In the past 6 years I have taught:
GNVQ IT (THE qualification I believe brought about the nationwide downfall of the subject, turning it into Schools league table booster)
DiDA (The replacement for GNVQ which tried to add more multimedia in and just ended up being lessons in gannt charts and project plans, with inconsistent moderation from the exam board)
OCR Nationals (The easier version of DiDA, with 1to1 teaching a pupil could complete a single award GCSE equivalent in a day).
GCSE ICT (The revised qualification launched in 2010, the same old rubbish with an exam about mobile phone technology thrown in to make it "cool")
I am also shocked at the statistic of how few teachers have Computing Science backgrounds. I am indeed a rare breed.
In the past 6 years I have taught:
GNVQ IT (THE qualification I believe brought about the nationwide downfall of the subject, turning it into Schools league table booster)
DiDA (The replacement for GNVQ which tried to add more multimedia in and just ended up being lessons in gannt charts and project plans, with inconsistent moderation from the exam board)
OCR Nationals (The easier version of DiDA, with 1to1 teaching a pupil could complete a single award GCSE equivalent in a day).
GCSE ICT (The revised qualification launched in 2010, the same old rubbish with an exam about mobile phone technology thrown in to make it "cool")
I am also shocked at the statistic of how few teachers have Computing Science backgrounds. I am indeed a rare breed.
In 93 we had computer studies - which boys did, and some other thing we called secretary studies - which girls did.
Computer studies involved some theory, bbc basic and logo - obviously a lot more I've forgotten.
Secretary studies involved learning to use word, typing and so on.
Have schools just got rid of the computer studies and put everyone on secretary studies since I was there?
Computer studies involved some theory, bbc basic and logo - obviously a lot more I've forgotten.
Secretary studies involved learning to use word, typing and so on.
Have schools just got rid of the computer studies and put everyone on secretary studies since I was there?
I was about to post the same thing, at school we learnt BBC Basic programming then I did an A/S level and then a BTEC in computer studies and we were learning Pascal, COBOL, C, UNIX (SunOS) and learning things like psuedo code. Can't believe how much things appeared to have changed over the last 15-20 years but sounds like things are about to get back on the right track.
Yes.
And then had to do endless battle with kids spending entire lessons playing flash games.
Given the number of people I encounter without the ability to use even the most basic functions of MS Word and Excel (even at Uni) I do wonder if this is such a bright idea.
Can see the benefits of a more CompSci oriented slant than ICT but the basics of general computer use still need to be taught IMO, however boring they may be.
Can see the benefits of a more CompSci oriented slant than ICT but the basics of general computer use still need to be taught IMO, however boring they may be.
So get them done in the earlier years, and free up some time for real work at GCSE level.
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Mar 2010
- Posts
- 935
- Location
- Suffolk/Bournemouth(Uni)
I feel the tasks they give are the problem. You can't give students weeks to make a leaflet in Publisher. They should still spend a tiny amount of time on Word/Powerpoint/Publisher to show off the capabilities. Then they know what it can do and they can google it when needed. Excel should be looked at in quite some depth. More on the formulae and link it with maths classes.
I would say turn off the internet for most lessons. It would allow the smart ones show their knowledge as everyone comes and asks them for help.
I would say turn off the internet for most lessons. It would allow the smart ones show their knowledge as everyone comes and asks them for help.
Would be lovely, and in a lot of schools this level of communication between faculties happens. Unfortunately, perhaps the majority of schools do not have the time to make to work in a cross curricular fashion.
Most other subjects use ICT time as a way to get kids on a maths/MFL site or on Word to give them some breathing space to mark.
Just as long as it gets covered somewhere, as so many people still lack basic report writing skills such as setting up a document to be able to insert an automated table of contents, or linked referencing etc. and can't do anything in excel beyond multiplying different cells together.
It's appalling really, given how much these things are relied on now, that people can't even use them properly instead just spending their lives wildly flailing around wasting time doing it wrong all the time.
Which is exactly what industry have been moaning about.
Which lead to courses being designed with units entitled 'Skills for Business'.
Which turned out to be far too easy, but too good to refuse for schools chasing the magic 5A*-C figure.
Comp Sci at school will be great, but it should sit firmly alongside 'ICT', diverging at GCSE level.
It's also interesting to note that there is a lower rate of computer science graduates with 2:1s or above than those in other subjects. I can't help but feel that has something to do with the graduate unemployment rate figures various sites put out which don't seem to consider "good" pass rates.
That said, I definitely support this.
Last edited:
Interesting, looks like the ICT Teachers are actually going to have to learn something new themselves to then be able to teach the children.
There is going to be carnage
+1
The thing is, I wasn't aware that Computing was now a compulsory GCSE, is that the case?
I did my GCSEs in 1998 and there was certainly no GCSE in Computers back then, infact I'm not even sure we had ICT lessons anymore at the GCSE stage.
A-Levels have also changed since I did them, and I'd expect any kind of A-Level in computers now should obviously be a challenge, since students opt to choose A-Levels it should teach things like programming.
i left school in 1998 and did an RSA in CLAIT it was very poor to say the least