IT at schools? Any good?

=XDC=FluphyBunny

=XDC=FluphyBunny

=XDC=FluphyBunny

Soldato
Joined
16 Feb 2010
Posts
5,230
Location
North East England
My girlfriend is looking into IT at schools and peoples experience of it ie was it any good, have you found it useful later in life at work etc.

It got me thinking about my experience which was very limited. Even though I've used computers since the ZX81 I had no interest in the subject at school. Speaking to my niece it would appear that IT now (or ICT as its called now?) seems to be a watered down subject and little more than an easy way of the schools pushing their averages up.

So what has other people here found? We are all on a computer forum so we eventually saw the light :D but did school ICT help or hinder your interest in computers?
 
i dont know, i come on here and learnt more about hardware than i did at college but while at school/college i learnt about ms office stuff which has helped me out a lot as i use excel (well open office calc which is nearly the same thing) every day for quite a lot of different things

i wasnt interested in it at school but i did learn a lot of useful boring basic things that im now glad i know and couldnt live without now.
 
Total dos when I was at school 6/7 years or so ago. The ciriculum wasn't really very structured and you didn't tend to do much in the lessons. Basic publisher, word, powerpoint skills. That was about it. It didn't get much better at A-level, due to a new course and examining body that had no idea what they were doing so I dropped it.

Our facilities were very very good we just didn't really get taught a lot, except not to steal the balls out the mouses and that swapping keyboards with your friend and typing stuff on his screen for teacher to see was a good laugh! That and unplugging peoples mice/keyboards sat opposite you.

I.T. was basically a 45 minute break in the computer room.
 
All you really do in ICT at schools is learn how to use office, databases in access etc and basic website building.

If you want to do anything remotely technical you will want to do Computing, not ICT
 
ICT in schools didn't bear any relevance to computing until a-level and even then it was rather watered down. It won't help at all if you are capable of using a computer in a reasonable capacity.
 
XRAY said:
I still regret choosing ICT for both GCSE and A-level. I'd always loved IT as a kid, mainly because of my love for computers.

Doing the ICT courses in high school was a huge mistake. Most of the course was office management with some database work chucked in. The database stuff was useful, but everything else was pants.

Most of it came down to memorizing pointless information and learning exam technique to pass, e.g.

GCSE: Health and Safety Laws (memorizing the name, date, and purpose of a crap-tonne of H&S legislation), questions like, "Name 5 advantages of open-plan office layouts" and "List the 5 advantages of in-house vs out-sourced software development".

A-Level: "Describe the difference between syntax and semantics.", "List 5 advantages and 5 disadvantages of fax machines".

Other than the practical database work we did at A-level, and listing the actual questions that we had to answer over and over, I remember nothing. I still wish I'd done music instead. The IT courses in British schools need a drastic restructure to help us keep ahead with the rest of the world. Some basic programming skills should be mandatory...
Click to expand...

this, i am doing AS Level atm and its soo theory based. and for the coursework we had to make a powerpoint ffs! and also make a database in access, that we didnt actually hand in cos you only hand in 'how you made it' , so screenshots etc.

i wish i hadnt done it (doesnt help my teacher is **** tho)
 
ICT / Computing is actually a massive subject and very difficult for any curriculum to address all of it. The subject isn't about learning about how to build and maintain computers it is about the technology of information systems and communications.

Even so with technology moving so fast it is very difficult to keep the curriculum up to date and relevant. Even if you have a super-knowledgeable teacher they will be throttled by the topics that they are required to teach.
 
My GCSE IT exam included a section of naming the diagrams. So picture of a mouse, monitor, keyboard etc. Not sure how it's changed since I did it, but I doubt it has become significantly better.

That being said, this is a computer forum and most people here have an understanding of IT far superior to the average Joe's, so criticism is sure to be damning.
 
Chives said:
Absolute rubbish at GCSE - worst subject I took, do not do it.
Click to expand...

Khaaan! said:
Building my first computer and faffing around helped more!
Click to expand...

this.

I'm not sure about the specific course I do, but I know it's absolutely crap. We spend half the time print screening every single click or action we do. We only ever use word/excel/powerpoint and you might get a bit of photoshop/access if you're lucky. Complete waste of time, avoid it unless you're a total n00b.
 
I have always loved Computer / I.T but I HATED I.T at school it was all excel and databases, not my kind of I.T, I'm more get my hands dirty with the hardware and if not that web design.

But now my girlfriend actually works for the I.T department in my old school and it has come a long way since I left, I can't speak for what the lessons are like but there actual systems have come on it leaps and bounds.

Most have at least a i3 and even a few rooms have 15+ machines with i7 inside

but I may have no liked my I.T lessons but my interest in Computers never waverd, it has always been my thing :D
 
Young whipper snappers!

I didn't even have an IT GCSE, once I'd done GCSEs there was an AS Level course at the school but it was all on Acorns which even at that time were clearly on their way out.

Instead went to College and did a BTEC ND in Computing, another two years wasted, most of it had nothing to do with computing, a lot of it was Maths and Business Studies. We had a Cobol programming course which was totally useless and we never even got to see the inside of a computer. Few bits on building an interactive PowerPoint system for a kiosk and an Access database project was all there was. Really all it was useful for was the certificate at the end to say to employers that I did know something about IT.
 
jakari said:
I have always loved Computer / I.T but I HATED I.T at school it was all excel and databases, not my kind of I.T, I'm more get my hands dirty with the hardware and if not that web design.

But now my girlfriend actually works for the I.T department in my old school and it has come a long way since I left, I can't speak for what the lessons are like but there actual systems have come on it leaps and bounds.

Most have at least a i3 and even a few rooms have 15+ machines with i7 inside

but I may have no liked my I.T lessons but my interest in Computers never waverd, it has always been my thing :D
Click to expand...

You have to consider that the majority of people's exposure to computer systems in the workplace will almost exclusively be software-based. If you want to get into hardware, you'll be expected to do A+ and MCE certs (or whatever the industry standard is these days, I haven't looked for ages) on your own steam.
 
I'm 31, in school we had 1 room which had computers and they were Acorns I believe. I can't really remember, but we seemed to 'randomly' have a computer class where we had to team up in 2s or 3s because there wasn't enough machines to go around. I seem to remember we mostly played Solitaire and Lemmings (and the teacher was fine with that?).

We also had a robotic turtle with a pen underneath it that we used to enter commands into via the computer and it moved forward, turned, and so on and we drew pictures with the pen. This was the whole class in a circle around big pieces of paper, oh the fun.. lol

I am sure times have changed significantly. It didn't really change how I felt about computers, I was already interested in computers before then - my friends and I used to laugh at the Acorns because we had Amigas at home!
 
I did GSCE IT and A level IT, an I found all it was doing from a practical point of view was producing a very basic system over a year which would take no loner than a couple of days even with no previous knowhow on how to do it.

Useless exams where memorising the perfect answer was more beneficial than actual understanding what you were writing. Practical work that consisted of building a system and then taking screen shots of what you have done following instructions out of a book to the letter again rather than understanding what was actually going on.

From a theory point of view just a load of health and safety **** that has no bearing on a carrear in IT ie how a network works, coding etc.

From my point of view a waste of time I wish I'd have taken another science instead.
 
Last edited:
Hah when I first began IT in year 7 they were using Windows 3.1 (95 hadn't come along).

One of the lessons I remember was being given a sheet of text to type out in Word.
 
I did ICT and Computer at A Level about 5 years ago, along with Computer Studies as a degree and now do most of my work in schools concerning IT so have a fairly good idea of what goes on.

ICT is pretty much useless, standard Office stuff. If you do an OCR instead of a GCSE you get to play with Fireworks, MovieMaker, Dreamweaver etc but it's all basic and follow instruction stuff.

Computing at A Level involved VB within an Access db and was a good introduction, they were looking into getting Java involved just as I was leaving.

Computer Science is massive amounts of theory about binary code, cognitive theory, history of computing with a few very heavy Java modules. Minimal database work and no Office work at all. Small amount of HTML and web dev but mostly I found it was the theory behind how the Computer works. Plenty of room to experiment with Unix, Java and Mobile apps though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom