Windows 10

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.

ahem. no comment. 😳
might have actually succeeded. this was just before the computer misuse act and about the time that kid got busted by the US feds in the Surrey Uni computer room.
so we swapped from hacking PADs to hacking the novell networks to make rudimentary IRC channels across the network printer queue.

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

our comp sci teacher was doing his O and A-level when he was teaching us. very experienced biology teacher that had had an interest in home computers. think he sat the O-level exam in the same sitting as the year above us, so was doing A-level the years he taught us O-level.

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 National Curriculum Key Stage goals for Computing. 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

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?

southampton then, but surrey after

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

I was last year to sit O-levels. And proud.

dick measuring session

no competition now there’s that large hardon collider

southampton then, but surrey after

You were at Soton?

Apologies if this means nothing to you but two questions: Were you a spod? And, did you play Mao?

Andy & Cougar want to get a room?

No (but I knew some), and No.

Ah well, just wondered if there was some intersection of circles going on. (Not a euphemism.)

There was a spod that we actually nicknamed “spod”.
There was also “stroboscope” (blinked 5x more frequent than normal), but I think he might have been a leccy eng like me rather than a spod.

I used to spod, but my definition is not the same as Cougar’s. If you spodded like I spodded, you’d know, cos my name has always been the same.

Yes. More specifically, a Mono[/url] spod.

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.

She was never forced, she just picks things up fast, knows how to work an android phone as well ( as far as opening galleries goes anyway). Dont worry she does plenty of active stuff too.

IMO basic IT skills should be done and dusted by primary age as well as basic security (staying safe online). Secondary IT should be getting deeper into how office software works, recovering from mishaps (dead hdd, virus) and the things you can do to ease the process and computer science getting into advanced programming and the infrastructure side of things. Tech, art and such can train pupils in their own respective packages (PS, Autodesk, etc.).

If school wont do it I will, as far as I’m able, already getting to the point that a laptop with child friendly linux is on the horizon.

a laptop with child friendly linux is on the horizon.

That’s where Raspberry Pi comes in for me. Nice cheap little Linux system for them to play on with good educational support and the opportunity to hook it up to some electronics etc. Ideal.

(And it even has minecraft)

Im thinking Qimo to start with, the Pi will come out later.

On the subject of RPi, they’ve just announced Win10 IoT Core for that – just sorting out a Win 10 dual boot to install that, as apparently a VM won’t write to the SD card (and MS couldn’t possibly make a standard image file which could be written with normal utilities 🙄 ) Hopefully have that going later tonight – very excited about that, as it’s one of the few occasions where I’ll have the highest spec available hardware!

Were you a spod?

Small Penis, Overtakes Dangerously ?

Oh, and has anybody seen a (plausible) date yet for this windows upgrade thingy ?

29th of July.

I still don’t know if I have to sign up somewhere.

On the subject of RPi, they’ve just announced Win10 IoT Core for that

Yep. There isn’t much to see mind you – it is literally a black screen and a menu. And wifi doesn’t work yet either. But it is a really interesting step by Microsoft and has given me a reason to go to Windows 10 so I can play properly with it.

It turns out on further research it’s been out for a month, and they’ve only just bothered to e-mail people who’ve registered an interest (unless I’m special). Also it’s possible to install using Linux and Python to reformat the image, so I don’t need to dual boot. But by the sounds of things I might not bother, and just try some other updated things I’ve been meaning to look at on the RPi.

WTF is going on in this thread??

Anyway…. Yeah if you’re doing any gaming you want Win 10 for DX12. If you have SLI it’s likely to be a game changer, as there’s going to be the ability for some programs to share/add-up the VRAM, not just to duplicate it as it stands now.

IE 2x 4GB cards will behave like an 8gb one!

WTF is going on in this thread??

A geekfest?

You expected something different in a thread about an operating system release?

Hah, no, but its pretty funny 😉

to be fair, even

Yeah if you’re doing any gaming you want Win 10 for DX12. If you have SLI it’s likely to be a game changer, as there’s going to be the ability for some programs to share/add-up the VRAM, not just to duplicate it as it stands now

is all geek to me

@scardypants – do you have two graphics cards in your PC working together [not just two doing different things]?

If not, don’t worry about it 🙂

Actually, another advantage is that DirectX 12 will also be much better at using multiple processors, so if you have a low-power CPU and a fast GPU then you’ll also see an improvement in modern games as the workload will be shared better on the CPU cores.

not sure I have a graphics card at all 😀

DX12 would be a game changer. Hmm, SLI/Crossfire added to the upgrade list…

The CPU/GPU thing would be helpful on my athsmatic QX6850, never mind any furture upgrades.