IT/Computer Education - A New Hope?

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Message 1402779 - Posted: 13 Aug 2013, 21:39:26 UTC
Last modified: 13 Aug 2013, 21:43:04 UTC

Here in the UK, "Computer Science" being taught as a subject was abandoned to be replaced by what I see as was a "Microsoft office skills" 'ITC' blunder.


Since then, we have the Raspberry Pi newly on the scene and new hope for spurring the introduction oncemore of teaching Computing to children and adults alike:


Learning Python using Codecademy and Raspberry Pi Minecraft: a resource of great note

... we got to talking about teaching using Raspberry Pi Minecraft. For a while I’d harboured a plan to write some proper teaching resources for it and had scribbled a few notes but hadn’t had time to develop it. Craig had had the same idea – yes, it was just like Darwin and Wallace – and we decided to get our heads together. Shortly afterwards Craig sent me what he had been working on...


Raspberry Pi Minecraft server

... What I really liked about Edwin’s blog are his final comments. Whether you are hacking Minecraft or building a media server or sending them into near space or messing about in Scratch, this is why we do what we do:

"You really have to admire the whole idea of the Raspberry Pi. They are brilliantly cheap, low power servers and whilst I may not have learned much about coding with them so far, I sure have learned a lot about the world outside of Windows, and just how much you can get out of very low priced hardware. The Pi represents a great deal of opportunity for all sorts of people with the ideas for all sorts of projects. I implore you to think of your own and give it a go, you won’t regret it." ...



Cue a freely usable device, FLOSS freedom, killer apps, and enthusiasm. How can any proprietary corporate types slap that down again?

Hopefully we have a new hope for computer and IT freedom as opposed to user exploitative enslavement.


IT is what we make it and what we allow it to become,
Martin
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Message 1402835 - Posted: 13 Aug 2013, 23:37:42 UTC - in response to Message 1402827.  

Here in the UK, "Computer Science" being taught as a subject was abandoned to be replaced by what I see as was a "Microsoft office skills" 'ITC' blunder.

Oh rubbish!


I agree with you here Chris. My company has recently undergone a reorganization to better position themselves in the marketplace during the recession, and we've recently hired a bunch of new coders (programmers) to re-write a lot of our customer software applications and to improve on them. These latest new hires are all complaining they want Macs because that's what they used in school (and thus are more familiar with), and most of them know very little about the Windows environment. This has caused in increase in support tickets because they don't know anything about the new Windows environment and how to write applications for it. There's been some grumbling about these new hires and a loss in trust that they have the competency required to lead the company forward.

...and we write for/use a Windows environment because that's what our customers use.
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Message 1402869 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 1:50:44 UTC - in response to Message 1402835.  

These latest new hires are all complaining they want Macs because that's what they used in school (and thus are more familiar with), and most of them know very little about the Windows environment.

How the he|_|_ did HR offer them a job?

First language for me was FORTRAN IV. Then a smattering of APL, didn't have the math then to really get it. Went next to IBM 1130 assembler. That actually rounded me out a lot. Some Honeywell 635 assembler and whatever FORTRAN was on that system. At one point around there I knew enough COBOL to write a hello world program. Also picked up FORTRAN G and FORTRAN H on a IBM 360. Yes, they are different. Got in BASIC on a PDP-11, also hacked that one, and HP 3000's SPL. Must have been a version of FORTRAN I was using on a DEC-10 where I first learned TECO. From there 6502, 8080 and Z80, Pascal. Recently picked up C and since I have a Mac a bit of Objective C. Haven't gone for C++ yet.

What I know is that you aren't a programmer until you have learned more than one language and done real programming on more that one O/S and hardware architecture.

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Message 1402873 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 1:57:14 UTC - in response to Message 1402869.  

These latest new hires are all complaining they want Macs because that's what they used in school (and thus are more familiar with), and most of them know very little about the Windows environment.

How the he|_|_ did HR offer them a job?


The prevailing hypothesis is that, since this is a completely new department built from the ground up during the reorg, that they were willing to hire just about anybody to fill positions and get the project off the ground. Indeed most of them have been given nearly everything they have asked for so that they cannot come back and say the company did not give them the resources needed to be successful if they were to fail.
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Message 1402993 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 9:12:10 UTC

The only language I took a course in is PL/I. I did not understand a single thing and, since I was 44, I thought I was too old to learn computer programming. Then, having changed job and company, I was given a copy of the "white book", the C language manual. I read the first chapter and found I could understand it. I never tried C++, I am too old now, and you can't teach new tricks to an old dog.
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Message 1403023 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 10:28:49 UTC - in response to Message 1402869.  

... First language for me was FORTRAN IV. Then a smattering of APL...

Very old and grumpy and crusty then?


What I know is that you aren't a programmer until you have learned more than one language and done real programming on more that one O/S and hardware architecture.

Agreed.


IT is what we make it,
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Message 1403029 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 10:41:44 UTC - in response to Message 1402967.  
Last modified: 14 Aug 2013, 10:59:21 UTC

... As far as I understand it Pascal based on AGOL 60, was thought to be mostly suitable for a teaching environment and not mainstream commerce. Something to do with the language not allowing procedures or functions to be passed as parameters to predefine the expected type of their parameters.

An important part of the ethos of Pascal was to eliminate the dangers of "pointers" and the debug fun they can cause in such as C. However, that also does away with the cleverness that can be done with data structures and object templates as used in C++.

Regardless, Pascal is still very capable. However, my own preferences are with other languages.


The fact is that there are more jobs wanting general office software use than there are for programmers. We don't have typing pools any more ...

Then have a specific subject for that. Importantly, teach to use a range of software packages spanning more than one vendor. It really is excruciatingly painful to see new starters panic-stricken when faced with even just the different versions of Microsoft systems. They are lost if the names are not exactly so and even more lost if the menus are in a slightly different position!

In contrast, the one saving grace for Apple Macs is the rigidly enforced consistent GUI. However, that can be just as bewildering when the menus don't quite fit the Apple proscription. It also encourages the users to become passive and ever more ignorant for the use of IT, incapable of learning anything 'new'...

Teach methods and what-to-do. Not Victorian rote following of screendumps!!


Apple gives schools computers... why? They are trying to increase market share...

That should be stopped as fraudulent.


The whole point of Education is to equip people to earn a living, you don't teach stuff that is not needed. ...

WRONG! VERY WRONG!

Teach what is 'needed' yes. You must ALSO teach children how to learn for themselves and to be inspired to do more than just become the same old robot repeating each day the same as the previous day.

Teachers need to be inspiring so that a few extras can be included to encourage at least some children to be innovative in whatever small ways.


IT is very much what we make it and what we allow it to become,
Martin
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Message 1403031 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 10:45:03 UTC - in response to Message 1402993.  

... I am too old now, and you can't teach new tricks to an old dog.

Never.

And sometimes you can ;-)


Keep searchin',
Martin

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Message 1403032 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 10:52:16 UTC - in response to Message 1403004.  
Last modified: 14 Aug 2013, 10:53:31 UTC

... Learning a new computer language is just like learning a new spoken language. The trick is knowing what you want to say in the first place in one language. Then you simply convert it to another to say the same thing. e.g. Good morning in English becomes Bonjour in French, or Guten Morgen in German. ...

That's one way that is rather restrictive and only works well if the differences between your two languages is merely "syntactic sugar". That works fine for example across the evolutionary improvements of different versions/releases of the same computer language.

Usually, different computer languages have different ways of doing things. Indeed, the whole philosophy underpinning a computer language can be very different to another language. Those "different ways" are usually the reason why there is a different language in the first place...

Hence, far better is to look at what grammatical/syntactic 'tools' and 'structures' a language offers and see how your task can be expressed to the best advantage of that language.


(And then there is the old joke that computer programmers can write C styled code in ANY language :-( )


IT is what we make it,
Martin
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Message 1403035 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 10:59:27 UTC - in response to Message 1402827.  

The truth is that computer science should not have been dropped in schools.

The fact that employers etc want school leavers to be proficient at using a compute is an entirely different subject. And considering how much work is done by children in schools that also require those skills then basic computer proficiency should be taught before they are 14, if not earlier.

Which would leave ECDL or a GCSE equivalent as a vocational subject and Computer science as an academic subject.
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Message 1403036 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 11:07:07 UTC - in response to Message 1402827.  
Last modified: 14 Aug 2013, 11:08:37 UTC

... Knowledge of Raspberry Pi's will not get you a job, an ECDL and knowledge of MS office will. End of story.

Knowledge of and the enthusiasm for a Raspberry Pi could well differentiate someone from all the other boring HR tick-boxes.

A Raspberry Pi could well drag some poor unfortunate out from serving greasy burgers on a zero-hours slave job.


IT is what we make it,
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Message 1403046 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 11:35:26 UTC
Last modified: 14 Aug 2013, 11:37:13 UTC

I used to program in LOGO, both on my TI99/4A and my AT&T Olivetti UNIX PC aka PC7300, It is a subset of LISP, with graphic capabilities (see A.Disessa ,H.Abelson, "Turtle geometry". But I am 78
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Message 1403095 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 15:42:47 UTC - in response to Message 1403023.  

... First language for me was FORTRAN IV. Then a smattering of APL...

Very old and grumpy and crusty then?

That is when your cousin was berating me for being smarter than he was and stealing my stuff to make up for it.

Oh, APL will make you old and grumpy ... :)

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Message 1403123 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 17:29:15 UTC - in response to Message 1403082.  
Last modified: 14 Aug 2013, 17:35:02 UTC

It's difficult to say what's needed in the computer industry these days and what might be needed in the near future. And those of us whose first computer they learned to "find the bad transistor or diode keeping the output of an AND GATE stuck by checking logic levels on the backplane of a computer "system" that had an IMP with a 100 mhz o'scope" may be at a disadvantage when trying to predict the future in IT needs today.

... It's difficult to find teachers who start from zero and work their way up to what's happening today. On the other hand, is it absolutely necessary to teach what an AND/OR/NOT gate is and how PN junctions can be connected together to form those three logic functions of a computer? And how those three logic functions are put together for the XOR gate, registers, encoders, decoders, and control logic?

On the other hand, how do you teach how to allocate memory to instantiate an object in a computer these days that has more than a billion PN junctions in a single integrated circuit chip?...

Starting from the 'ground up' is a very good way to build interest and enthusiasm rather than getting bogged down with a gazillion new bewildering terms by parachuting into dusty 'reference' text books...


So... My crash course introduction into computing and programming would run through in less than a day's teaching of:

(A few YouTube vids)

Our ancients predicting the seasons and the movement of the moon:

Stonehenge and celestial mechanics
Stonehenge solstice reconstruction


The Greek computer for all of the then known Astronomy and Astrology:

The Antikythera Mechanism from about 2000 years ago

Virtual model of the Antikythera Mechanism

2010AD: Lego Antikythera Mechanism


So that Victorian's didn't get their maths wrong and suffer the Royal Navy losing ships due to navigation errors due to poor maths tables:

Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2


Fast forward to using electricity and telephone relays:

Konrad Zuse's computing machine Z3


And so on to introduce the use of valve electronics with Colossus, transistors and then silicon chips and their use in calculators, computers, and now most electronic systems.

The final message being that there is an awful lot that can and is done with programming and programmable devices.

Also note that "programming" does not necessarily mean using a computer language. Examples being programming your washing machine through to CNC machines for their precision machining to follow a preset sequence of operations...

Anyone not wowed need not continue for the rest of the course!


Aside: A quick scan through YouTube and why is there so very much conspiracy crap?! Also, why are the presenters for history so impossibly boring?!!

Short inspired 5 minute segments without any of the mysticism or Media hype should work well...


Class dismissed!
Martin
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Message 1403129 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 17:39:45 UTC - in response to Message 1403095.  

Oh, APL will make you old and grumpy ... :)

Then there's B.

Thankfully, I've been able to stay above C ;-)


IT is what we make it...
Martin

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Message 1403137 - Posted: 14 Aug 2013, 18:03:21 UTC - in response to Message 1403129.  

Oh, APL will make you old and grumpy ... :)

Then there's B.

Thankfully, I've been able to stay above C ;-)

You have forgotten D.

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