[Closed] Windows 10

Click the up arrow to show all notifications then Customise and you can set the Win one not to show, just remember to go back on the 29th July to see if it's downloaded

I'll try that. Thanks.

However, the simplicity of use of OSX and iOS lends itself well to education. Nursery and Reception children were making iPad videos of themselves going on a bug hunt last week with almost no help from teachers.

Not that impressive.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/01/kids_learn_hacking_android/

FWIW my 2 year old can work an iPad and picked it up a lot quicker than we did. I think it's more to do with the nature of the OS than the OS itself (if you get what I mean - like comparing OSX to iOS).

Not sure about no IT teachers, there will still be plenty of scope for teaching computer science, it just might be a bit more advanced than it is now.

Hang on.. Are we supposed to get email or something about this upgrade?

FWIW my 2 year old can work an iPad and picked it up a lot quicker than we did.

Isn't that quite sad? How are his tree climbing skills?

Those Ethiopian children really are impressive!

Not sure about no IT teachers, there will still be plenty of scope for teaching computer science, it just might be a bit more advanced than it is now.

I don't know about more advanced. I'm not sure what my opinion is but the man I was chatting to certainly believed that IT would become a support subject as opposed to a discrete one. That's how it's become in our primary school with class teachers leading children through basic IT.

In higher education, there seems to be a maths pre-req but not an IT, computer science or similar.

For my current course (BSc with Goldsmiths) I needed to have had a B in A Level maths but nothing directly computer related. The first year has a crash course in Java, Networking, Physical Computing (how CPU, RAM, HDD actually work). No previous knowledge assumed.

My old uni had a huge Mac suite in the year before i arrived, about 80 high end iMacs. These were mostly replaced in my 1st year with shuttle PCs.

When I went to Southampton in 2002, the main library had a suite of computers and about 5 lonely looking Macs sitting unloved whilst people queued to use the PCs. I'm sure that looks very different now.

In my view 'they' (not sure who they are) got school IT wrong years ago. It shouldn't have been about using Word or Excel, but about learning how to program. That's why the Raspberry Pi was developed, to fill the gap.

A room full of Mac's may look impressive, not so when you try and run any main stream CAD software.

We run W7 and 8.1 across all work desktops and laptops. Both seem rock steady, and this week has seen our first ever IT issue in a couple of years related to software - printing from our virtual desktop, still on XP, has started to fall off a cliff of bugs 🙁

I agree that teaching of technology is rapidly changing. There will be IT teachers in schools in 10 years, but they will be doing higher lessons and training all other staff to keep up with the pupils. The current and ongoing issue in schools is the hardware and infrastructure is not keeping up. Our kids go to one of the best school I know - with 80 ancient machines between 800 pupils and 50 odd staff, iffy broadband and no wifi....

My friends who teach in infant schools say that they're now getting kids in who can't use a mouse, so there may be some need for IT teaching in schools in the future.

The number of 16-year-olds I teach who have hopeless IT skills would say there's still some way to go.

The fact that kids are coming in to schools without experience of using a mouse isn't demonstrating a need to increase IT teaching in schools; it's a demonstration of the need to *change* the IT taught in schools.

By the time these kids reach the job market, do you really think people will be using mice as an input device still? The fact that you have to be "trained" to use one, tells us they are rubbish.

Rachel

By the time these kids reach the job market, do you really think people will be using mice as an input device still? The fact that you have to be "trained" to use one, tells us they are rubbish.

Rachel

Whattttt? Have you seen an episode of CSI?

Miketually - I guess the current crop of 16 year olds are coming from a kind of no man's land of IT. If you think of the changes in tech since they began their education, it's no wonder they're behind. Teachers too, as they came up through primary, wouldn't have had the training or expertise to help much either.

Mikew & Rachel;

Obviously speculation but, I think the mouse and keyboard will be here for a good while yet. There's a reason that whilst general tech has changed almost unrecognisably in the last 20 years, mice and keyboards are pretty much the same!

My 5 year old was praised for her "IT skills" at her last parent's evening.

"Ah", I thought proudly, "That'll be a result of me getting that Raspberry Pi, taking her to Maker Faire, and teaching her some basic programming and simple circuits."

Nope.

It was because she was one of the only kids that could work a mouse. 🙄

Take that Asia!

Isn't that quite sad? How are his tree climbing skills?

NO!

Kids absorb skills like a sponge. The fact that they are exposed to a huge variety of different skills now (including riding bikes, football, tree climbing alongside iPads and dronecopter flying and whatnot) is a massive benefit to our society.

Don't look down on computery things with those rose tinted glasses. Computers are bloody brilliant. As are trees, toys, and bikes.

In my view 'they' (not sure who they are) got school IT wrong years ago. It shouldn't have been about using Word or Excel, but about learning how to program.

Disagree. The vast majority of people don't need to know how to program. It'd be like teaching everyone in school how to change a clutch or lay bricks.

Don't worry though. The plummy posh kids still have it covered:

PS Graham, what are you using to teach programming to a 5 year old?

Disagree. The vast majority of people don't need to know how to program. It'd be like teaching everyone in school how to change a clutch or lay bricks.

Very true.

Don't look down on computery things with those rose tinted glasses. Computers are bloody brilliant. As are trees, toys, and bikes.

I don't (and am doing a computer BSc). Using an iPad by age 2 seems a stretch imo. My 3 year old doesn't / can't.

PS Graham, what are you using to teach programming to a 5 year old?

https://scratch.mit.edu/

^^no idea if that's what Graham uses, but that's a great one.

Graham, what are you using to teach programming to a 5 year old?

I've used some of the Year Of Code stuff. She completed the LightBot Jr game.

It's all very graphical, but gets them thinking about planning steps and visualising what is going to happen.

My plan is to move onto Scratch on the Raspberry Pi as the next step, maybe during the school holidays.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/getting-started-with-scratch/

We also did a couple of simple circuits on a breadboard before Maker Faire, just to get her switched on to electronics a little bit.

Just dead simple battery + button + LED stuff. She liked this one:

[img] [/img]

Then at Maker Faire she ended up doing a little bit of soldering so we bought a couple of simple SparkFun kits that we can put together at home.

Again just basic stuff like the Weevil:

[img] [/img]
http://shop.pimoroni.com/products/sparkfun-weevileye-beginner-soldering-kit

We also picked up a Circuit Stickers book, where they make circuits by sticking down conductive tape and components:

[img] ?v=1406640970[/img]
http://shop.pimoroni.com/products/circuit-stickers-starter-kit

Using an iPad by age 2 seems a stretch imo. My 3 year old doesn't / can't.

I vividly remember her when she was one, trying to do the pinch/pull gesture to zoom in on photo in a paper magazine. She just expected photos to work like that.

It was about then I fully realised that the world they will grow up in will be technologically very different to ours! 😀

I guess the current crop of 16 year olds are coming from a kind of no man's land of IT. If you think of the changes in tech since they began their education, it's no wonder they're behind. Teachers too, as they came up through primary, wouldn't have had the training or expertise to help much either.

I qualified as a primary school teacher in 1999 - 5 years before the current crop of 16-year-olds started primary school - and [i]I[/i] used computers when I was in primary school. Primary schools started to get PCs and networked computer suites with web access in '98 or '99 so they'd been in schools for a decade before the current GCSE-takers started junior school.

I qualified as a primary school teacher in 1999 - 5 years before the current crop of 16-year-olds started primary school - and I used computers when I was in primary school.

When I was in my final years at secondary school I used to go along to my old primary school and [i]"help teach the kids about computers"[/i] - which at that time* consisted of taking them two at a time to have a go on [i]the[/i] BBC Micro. 😆

.

* the dark ages

[img] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/xAwe2P0ayTT1l8VTozTXUqOmOdqDke1KrdqsbWdBKMFE=w500-no [/img]

She's nearly 12 now 🙂

[i]*notes Douglas Adams by the bedside*

*nods approvingly*[/i]

(you forgot to hide your filthy OK magazine habit though)

When I was in my final years at secondary school I used to go along to my old primary school and "help teach the kids about computers" - which at that time* consisted of taking them two at a time to have a go on the BBC Micro.

Luxury!

Our high school "computer lab" consisted of half a dozen RM Link 480Z machines...

[img] [/img]

connected to a shared dual (yes, DUAL) 5.25" floppy disk drive.

[img] [/img]

They were horrifically slow if you wanted to do anything involving I/O. In a 40 minute lesson, if we were lucky we could just about get all the machines loaded up with the software we were supposed to be using before the bell went.

and for those a little younger
[img] [/img]
Cleaning out an old office found a copy of Lotus 123 on 5.25" discs

Luxury!

Our high school "computer lab" consisted of half a dozen..

A Lab?!? Luxury!

You missed my emphasis on "[b]the[/b] BBC Micro".
As in one(!), on a trolley, that was wheeled into whatever classroom needed it. 😀

I'd have swapped the Links for a Beeb with a spring in my step and joy in my heart. Didn't get my hands on a BBC in Academia until I hit college.

That said, at college we had a minicomputer - a PR1ME 2655 (IIRC) - and heavily restricted access to JANET which we spent most of our waking lives trying to circumvent. Heady days indeed.

My secondary school had a PC hooked up to the internet, though the web didn't exist, in a business studies room for some reason. As part of one GCSE ICT lesson we carried a floppy disk down two flights of stairs, along a corridor then back up two flights of stairs in order to use Telnet to download a text file to the disk, which we carried back to the ICT classroom. Mine didn't work, so I just copied my friend's.

I failed my ICT GCSE; well, I asked to not be entered as I was on track for a grade G because we didn't get given enough coursework to do to get a higher grade. A year or two later, my teacher was working in the lino department of a local DIY store.

A year or two later, my teacher was working in the lino department of a local DIY store.

I was in the first year to have a "Technological Studies" Higher available.
(In theory a great class: bit of electronics, bit of pneumatics, bit of mechanical engineering, bit of programming)

It was taught by a very confused woodworking teacher. 😆

You missed my emphasis on "the BBC Micro".
As in one(!), on a trolley, that was wheeled into whatever classroom needed it.

We had two BBCs: our school was on a hill, and the computer trolley couldn't navigate the stairs.

The current and ongoing issue in schools is the hardware and infrastructure is not keeping up. Our kids go to one of the best school I know - with 80 ancient machines between 800 pupils and 50 odd staff, iffy broadband and no wifi....

If you weren't so far away I'd ask for a contact to offer our services... You never know what we're doing might get big enough we get up there though - and yes, I'm sitting in a school right now, so know what budgets are like, the whole point of what we're doing is to give good IT on a budget.

FWIW they use http://coding.discoveryeducation.co.uk/ here. Also Scratch I think - at least my oldest found the TV channel for the RPi at home and was busy playing with that on there with no input from me.

My secondary school had 480Zs when I started there, but graduated to a room full of BBCs at some point. Though I think I knew a lot more than the teacher when I did my computing O level in my own time in the lower 6th - at least I was left to get on with it (and didn't hack the school system too much when left alone, never got caught anyway!)

does remind me of high school when the first computer was connected to the internet (no password) and the months allowance was used in a day..... that and networks where you had to keep plugging coax cables and that in and out as it kept going down.

and heavily restricted access to JANET which we spent most of our waking lives trying to circumvent.

the olden days were best.

and could get stuff done just as quickly as the latest "experience" that you get with modern stuff.

Though I think I knew a lot more than the teacher when I did my computing O level in my own time in the lower 6th

I was coding Z80 assembler aged 14-15. (We had an amstrad 464).

We also put in an official complaint that there was a question about spreadsheets on the O-level final exam, and this was not in the syllabus! I expect those are now done in primary school?

I failed my ICT GCSE; well, I asked to not be entered as I was on track for a grade G because we didn't get given enough coursework to do to get a higher grade. A year or two later, my teacher was working in the lino department of a local DIY store.

I didn't actually take IT at school at all.

I was in the first year to sit GCSEs instead of O'levels. The ICT qualification then was "Computing" and it was offered at Options time; in the lower years of High School the only IT lessons had been as part of General Studies, a catch-all that rotated classes between subjects every six weeks. (Did anyone else do this, incidentally? I remember Computing, sex education, cookery, and some sort of bizarre tree-hugging cod psychology thing that had us paying anonymous compliments and falling over and catching each other.)

Anyway. Helpfully, they'd stuck Computing in the same Options group as Electronics, because no-one would want to do both of those subjects would they?

I couldn't decide which to pick, so had a look at the syllabus. Once I'd stopped laughing I realised that a) I could almost certainly get close to 100% on the exam right then at 13 without sitting in the class for the next two years and b) I knew more about the subject than the Computing teacher (I'd wound up teaching him in the "General Studies" sessions). Not to blow my own trumpet, I'd been programming since I was 11 so was probably ahead of the curve but the point is the syllabus was very, very basic. So I concluded "bugger that" and took Electronics instead.

In hindsight I should've said something and asked to sit the exam. Kinda sad that the school didn't suggest it really.

so we swapped from hacking PADs

Don't, you'll make me go all misty-eyed. Netlink, an elegant weapon from a more civilised age. Whereabouts were you?

I expect those are now done in primary school?

Prompted by this thread I've just been checking the [url= https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study ]National Curriculum Key Stage goals for Computing[/url]. Quite eye-opening.

Key Stage 1 (i.e. 5 to 7 year olds) includes "understand what algorithms are, how they are implemented as programs on digital devices.
create and debug simple programs"

I was coding Z80 assembler aged 14-15. (We had an amstrad 464).

Given we had a BBC by that age, I must have been younger when I was hand compiling Z80 assembler on a ZX81 8)

I was in the first year to sit GCSEs instead of O'levels

A year or two younger than me then - TBH I'm not totally sure I did O level rather than GCSE, but I think the change was the year after (I definitely did O levels the year before). You'd presumably have had to do a project like I did though rather than just sitting the exam (which was about the only time I actually spent on it, pretty much zero prep for the exam).

Key Stage 1 (i.e. 5 to 7 year olds) includes "understand what algorithms are, how they are implemented as programs on digital devices.
create and debug simple programs"

New in the curriculum this year. Still not quite sure what they're doing in KS1, we've not been asked to add anything to the system.

edit: though thinking about it anything they are doing is presumably simple graphical web based stuff

I was hand compiling Z80 assembler on a ZX81

Pffft.. I was using butterflies by that age

[img] [/img]
https://xkcd.com/378/

Disagree. The vast majority of people don't need to know how to program. It'd be like teaching everyone in school how to change a clutch or lay bricks.

You could say the same about any school subject. Why do physics unless you're going to be a scientist? Why do biology unless you're going to do medicine?
And as for history!

Surely you do them to learn a bit about them, so you can find out what you're good at, and enjoy, so you can take them further.

there are some days I appriciate being an amature on the sidelines of a coding dick measuring session 😉

Anyway one poor friend did end up pushing the power button halfway through installing something from 12 floppy discs (about a 3hr process) and spent the next 90 mins holding the button in while swapping discs.

Agree with richmars ^

I also think that (basic) programming teaches some general skills like logic, problem solving, planning, visualisation and algebra - which are all pretty useful even if you don't go on to become a professional geek.

Whereabouts were you?