Tag: ICT
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Do you want to learn about coding? Free book offer!
Three years ago I had great fun teaching some primary school children how to use Scratch and take their first steps towards being computer programmers of the future. At the time there was a lot of optimism about changes to the English curriculum and a return to a more rigorous teaching of computing in schools.…
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Three steps forward, but one step back?
The new English ICT/computer science curriculum promises to be a huge step forward and, in my experience, a chance to teach children something for which their enthusiasm promises to be close to unlimited. One thing puzzles me, though. Speaking about it today the education secretary, Michael Gove – who deserves some praise for listening to the arguments…
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The Art of Scratch, Code Club and the ICT curriculum
Regular readers will know I have something of a small obsession with Conway’s Game of Life – the classic “game for no players” based on cellular automata, and so, naturally enough, when I decided that I really had to write my own Scratch program from, err, scratch to sharpen up my skills for teaching children…
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Proposals for a new English ICT curriculum
This morning’s Times carries an full page report – on page 3 no less (subscription required) – of the British Computer Society’s (BCS) proposals, on behalf of the Education Department, for a new ICT curriculum. In fact the newspaper report seems have been injected with more than a little bit of spin – The Times says that…
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Computer science in English schools: the debate rages on
In recent months a new consensus has emerged about teaching ICT (information and communications technology) in England’s schools: namely that it has been sent up a blind alley where kids are taught little more than how to manipulate Microsoft’s “Office” products. That recognition is a good thing, though the way in which the government were…
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Two cheers for Gove?
Michael Gove is to make a speech today in which he is going to lambast the existing ICT curriculum in English schools and promise a revolutionary new start. Sounds like a good thing, and certainly he appears to have identified the cretinous nature of the current curriculum and its chaining to Microsoft’s proprietary software. So…
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Stephen Twigg hits the nail on the head
I try to keep openly political things off here, but this response to the OFSTED report on computing in schools is so good it deserves more publicity: Stephen Twigg MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, responding to the report from Ofsted on ICT in schools today said: “Today’s Ofsted report on ICT in schools shows that…
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The dismal state of computing education in English schools
I didn’t get my enthusiasm for computing from school – it was almost something latent: I remember being very excited to see a “microcomputer” for the first time in Brent Cross shopping centre in 1979. But the first one I used – hopelessly – was in school, a Commodore Pet, in 1980. It turned up…
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 