[Gllug] App development for children

[Martin N Stevens]

On 19 May 2011 19:03, Christopher Hunter <cehunter at gb-x.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-05-19 at 09:05 +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
>
>>    Some years ago now I was invited to a discussion at the BETT education
>> exhibition. One of the teachers attending explained that she had just been
>> appointed as head of IT and had come along to find out what it involved.
>> Have things improved?
>>
>
> No.  If anything, things have become worse!

That depends if you are talking about the technical or curriculum side
of things.

I'd agree that the teaching has become worse but that is a large part
due to the examination boards and the curriculum that they set out,
however a good teacher can make the the lessons valuable and
inspiring, the issue I tend to see is that most IT teachers are not
usually subject specific but teach IT as their secondary subject, or
have comes straight out of university and through teacher training.
It is rare that you see a teacher that has done any significant work
in IT and therefore understands the subject.

But then you find that a lot across teaching and not just IT. But then
how many subjects change as quickly IT.

> Schools spend inordinate amounts of money on software (invariably MS
> software and "operating systems"), and on overpriced commodity hardware.
> The hardware is frequently re-badged well-known brands (HP and Dell
> machines marked up by 175% and with an "RM" sticker attached).

Really, and what evidence do you have on this ? RM do some good stuff
and the technical support they provide is excellent, not that I use
them in my current school.

Other than my licenses for MS, Internet, MIS and Finance, I have £6k
to upgrade my servers, fix PC's, network upgrades etc etc, this year.
I have 1500 users, 450 machines and periperals. And we manage to
support this with Me, and 1.5 term time only technicians.

> In most schools, the machines are invariably physically damaged.

The damage most schools get to PC's is amazing but then having 35
machines in a room, with class changes ever 50 minutes, and bored kids
it's to be expected. At least they don't nick the mouse balls anymore.

> riddled with malware, and connected to the 'net by a crude filtering system that
> the kids can trivially circumvent (but costs £100s per port per year).

Maybe thats your network but it sure as hell isn't mine, and most of
the other network managers I know take massive pride in the stability,
and lack of virii on there network,

There is a lot of technical comptence in the IT support in schools,
let me point you to http://www.edugeek.net so you can see the
community that has built up around Education IT support.

> This is NOT an environment conducive to good teaching!

I believe that most teachers has some pretty amazing tools to teach
with however there are a lot of teachers that are not interested in
using them.say you've been a geography teacher for 25 years and for 20
years you taught well and got good grades without having to use ICT
then some one gives you a whiteboard PC and projector. What are you
going to do to up your grades ?

So a lot of IT in schools is not used just for teaching with, there
are things like electronic registration, online marks/grade analysis,
cashless catering systems, door access control, VOIP phones, texting
systems, CAD/CAM, music software and hardware etc etc.

It's a pretty varied enviroment, and usually managed pretty well on a
technical level.

And for a GCSE Computing see

http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/kd/ocr_31053_kd_gcse_2010_spec.pdf

then tell me thats an easy exam to pass. But a lot of schools choose ICT

http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/kd/ocr_31062_kd_gcse_2010_spec.pdf

But then most schools will steer bright kids away from ICT as a
subject and more towards the traditional academic subjects, thats
where the best teachers are and it gives the kids a broader education
base to allow them to choose which careers they want to do later.

How do you choose what subjects to take/teach

Maths, Further Maths, Physics at A level,
or
ICT, Media Studies, Art at A level.

One might make a great graphic/web game level designer/graphic effects
artists and the other will be able to write some really complicated
algorythms for DNA analysis, GPS/GIS software.

Needless to say this is a subject that is very close to me.

Regards

Budgester
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