I thought it would be simple, open up my browser, search “Behind the Screen” AND Willetts and I would be able to read more about David Willetts brave new world for ICT education. Epic #fail. Surely, if we are going to teaching about the use of IT, ICT and Digital technology we are going to use it effectively ourselves?
Instead I found a lot of press coverage and ‘knowing agreement’ that an appropriate education was indeed important for this nation (and all nations) and for the rapidly changing IT industry sector in particular. You only have to briefly scan the number, no spreadsheet skills required, to support change. The take-up of IT qualifications has fallen in the past five years: a staggering 57 per cent decline between 2005 and 2010.
The total value of internet sales by UK non-financial businesses employing 10 or more people in 2008 was £222.9b, up 36.6% on 2007, which shows in economic terms the pace of this change.
A change that many ICT Departments up and down the country have been screaming out for, for quite some time now.
And it did not take long for that most annoying of phrases associated with digital literacy to appear in an article.
Willetts also said that he wants to see 21st century skills in school, and that includes writing programs. Read more: TechEYE
For goodness sake, that statement is itself 11 years out of date! All this in the wake of Google CEO Eric Schmidt criticism in Edinburgh last month? Not if you accept the review has been underway since 2010.
So, to the reason for this post. Do we really need to be teaching children how to program code in school? Learning ICT? Or do we need to be encouraging children to be creative with technology. If one of those pathways is being creative through coding and programming, then provide a pathway to follow with opportunities to extend that interest ‘beyond the curriculum.’ Yet, equally so, it maybe digital media, digital storytelling, digital journalism, animation, digital marketing, game creation and digital _________ (blank). ICT is no longer a broad enough title for learning with and about technology. Nor is it satisfactory to accept that software skills should be taught discretely by an ‘ICT Department,’ but let’s not digress.
Shouldn’t industry be given the opportunity to communicate how best to progress and evolve the curriculum and also take on their share of the responsibility to develop the learner? Why not introduce the industry to the education process, rather than merely delivering the ‘educated’ to the industry, whose skills are by then, quickly going stale? Do we not have a social responsibility to educate the whole person sitting ‘behind the screen’ and not just the academic?
I can not see why a path or qualification framework can not be presented and extended to include industry rather than service industry. A symbiotic model also presents an important decision fork in the road for both the young person (at 16, at 18) and industry, particular important given higher educations recent fees hike.
Which learning environment (industry or Academia) best prepares me, for my future?
Can we afford to let this young person leave our business? Do we wish to support their educations, lead their education or employ them full time?
Finally, I am going to throw back to David Willett’s need for students to be ‘writing programs.’ Can we not inspire them first? Let them explore platforms such as Kodu, Scratch, Alice, Panther, Construct, GameMaker and Quest….. let them design, create and learn to love the possibilities of coding.
Ironically, some of these platforms aim to remove the need to ‘know code’ just at the time when we are about to teach them how to programme? Anyone else see something fundamentally askew here?
Just for reference, lets not exclude our Primary colleagues, some of whom are already leading the way, hat tip to @IanAddison and @chrisleach78) who have the students in their school experiencing coding, in amongst many other digital things.
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