Computing vs ICT

There has been a longstanding debate about what Computing should encompass in Scottish Schools.  However I do like David Muir’s analogy of the stroppy teenager of a subject.  But I am not certain that Computing can ever be a science in that it does not have a body of fundamental knowledge independent of other sciences.  It is a very important technology, perhaps the most important at the present time and thus deserves academic study.

Computing derives from two different but related needs, number crunching or heavy duty arithmetic and data processing, exploring and processing non numeric data to turn it into information.  These overlap.  Is a spreadsheet data processing or arithmetic…a bit of both?

It can be tackled at various levels of complexity; there is the simple model of a computer as a blackbox with simplified explanation of how it works; there is the logic of computer systems and there are algorithms of the structure of a computer and there are the physical bits that carry out the processes; there is programming and problem solving and several other aspects of the computer which offer a wide range of possible courses to students of all abilities and inclinations.

What it should not be is the teaching of the four basic computer packages, word processing etc.  Every student should be exposed to the uses which they can make of a computer in the course of lifelong learning and work, but it does not need a specialist computer teacher for that kind of course.  There are a range of other specialists in a school such as Business Studies teachers and librarians who are better equipped to teacher theses subjects.

Discipline and Punishment

This post is prompted by a post from Don Ledingham regarding the automatic exclusion of pupils for swearing at a a teacher.

I taught in two tough inner city Dundee schools and  exclusion and shouting were both equally ineffective as the pupils were quite used to  shouting, swearing and possibly beatings etc., in their home environment. What really got to them was a slow and lengthy discussion of how poorly they had behaved and how disappointed I was with them and how would their parents react when I told  them about the incident and were they not therefore disappointed with their own behaviour.  More in sorrow than in anger.  Ten minutes of that would often make the brashest thug go to pieces.  Mind you I do have the same effect when I trap a colleague in a corner at a meeting!

The problem in many schools is that incidents come so thick and fast that the SMT do not have time for anything but a cursory approach.  It is back to a question of numbers.  The best schools probably have an incident rate with about 1 or 2 percent persistent offenders in the school population.  Logging persistent offenders over a number of years in poor schools only reveals about 7 or 8 percent persistent offenders but that is enough to run teachers ragged, because it encourages hangers-on to get involved.  Furthermore guidance and SMT are then only fighting fires not preventing them.

Teachers and Information Literacy

John Low and Learning at Teaching Scotland has mentioned a colleague of my, Elspeth Scott, in his blog, underlining the importance of librarians to the learning process. Their role can only increase as experts in searching for and marshalling information, and in guiding pupils’ online enquiries.

It may sound a bit too radical but it is perhaps appropriate to suggest that teachers should become more like librarians, guides rather than instructors. Stephen Heppell as mentioned in a Neil Winton blog is pointing in a similar direction.  There is so much information in the world and so many ways of learning about it that teachers can no longer regard themselves as the sole fount of knowledge for their pupils.

Open Source CPD

This is an idea which John Johnston has put forward and which he talked about at teachmeetperth. The more I think about it the more I like it.

Adding to its acceptance and relevance I think perhaps a national Glow group of the same title and with a webpart link to the opensourcecpd site should be a high priority.