When I first started work we were in the last days of DOS, the tools we used to produce reports drastically improved every year. In Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Graphics production. We got exited by each development that enabled us to be more productive. I remember painfully learning Lotus 123 (version 3) this was pre WYSIWIG. Printing was an art. All but the most basic Graphs needed a separate application Harvard Graphics. The Next version had separate style files that ammended the .123 file. Then I got my hands on Excel and it blew the rest out of the water – but it wouldn’t run on the old networked machines.
So when I study the curriculum for Years 7, 8, and 9, it’s all very familiar. In fact in all secondary school years, pupils spend the majority of their time learning office/ productivity software. Fantastic for me – I know this stuff, but for children the context is completely different. We were paid to produce reports and more importantly were intellectually movitvated to do so. What is the relavance to a 12 year old?
Of course the more intellectual children grasp the problem and it’s great to see their faces when they discover the power that Excel gives them. But for the rest of them its like pushing water uphill.
Even if I were to agree that we should be teaching children solely what they need to be usefully employed (which I definately don’t). When these children hit the workplace most will be writing straight onto web-based applications and the young ICT talented recruits will be producing film and multimedia to put over their points of view.
Much better to find what the kids want to do with ICT then try to tap into that energy and extend it, nurturing them along the way, helping them to push through their boundries. For most of them except the computer science geeks, that means multimedia: Video, photos, sound and animation. This is actually tough for me, because I have to learn something new, but much more exiting.
[This post was from December but didn't get put up because of the hosting problem]
