Doing Something Useful

[MarillionFan]

Not for profit???

Not on your nelly.

[NickFitz]

I will share that in UK schools a large % are banned from creating executables because of the fear of a 12 year old writing a VBA macro that destroys the world financial system.

Yes, the people who run the world financial system get quite annoyed about that. They like us to think they were only able to destroy it themselves because they're so clever

[doodab]

Yes, the people who run the world financial system get quite annoyed about that. They like us to think they were only able to destroy it themselves because they're so clever

At least the decision to ban VBA macros is grounded in experience of what can happen when they get into the wrong hands.

[Dominic Connor]

So is IT


I do think there is room for a sort of "how computers fit into the modern business world" course, but perhaps that belongs in the realm of business studies.

IT, or as it is called in many schools ICT seems to have got landed with teaching a whole bunch of things that you might think better covered in another subject, if you can talk about modern business IT to teenagers, I'll try and find you a gig.

[Dominic Connor]

Part of the problem is trying to work out what you can teach in schools - it's all very well for Michael Gove to say that teachers don't teach programming, but where do you start? The days of just switching a BBC B on and being able to write BASIC from the start are a long way off - you need to know what language to teach, and then make sure you have the right skills there to teach it. Just having something which says "Hello, world" in Java isn't very interesting either.

I agree with Dominic on a number of things, though - I'm a parent governor at my children's primary school, and I'm also on the ICT committee at school as well. The two IT teachers have no experience of IT - the technician said at one stage "we need to get a new server", so they were about to buy one. No-one could explain to me what the server actually did - they have a separate backup device, they have a separate box which does the website, they don't know what the server does but they know they "need" one.

The school knows that they have a decent resource nearby that they can call on, and a number of teachers ask me about different IT things - some I would say that I know next to nothing about, but I know that even the limited tiny bit that I know is more than they do. Schools are encouraged to try to get governors who want to get involved and can provide skills that the teaching staff lack, but that's a lot easier said than done.

Part of what I'm trying to do is what Faqqeralready does, deliver impartial IT common sense for teachers who have been landed with a suvject they have no experience in.

As for programming, my idea is that we don't make that decision, though we might inform some teachers that Delphi has a lot more yesterdays than tomorrows. My view is that its like contracting, the client decides he wants to use VB or PHP and I as an agent find him some people who can help with that. The contractor would help tutor the kids and/or maybe run Saturday sessions.

[EternalOptimist]

Part of what I'm trying to do is what Faqqeralready does, deliver impartial IT common sense for teachers who have been landed with a suvject they have no experience in.

As for programming, my idea is that we don't make that decision, though we might inform some teachers that Delphi has a lot more yesterdays than tomorrows. My view is that its like contracting, the client decides he wants to use VB or PHP and I as an agent find him some people who can help with that. The contractor would help tutor the kids and/or maybe run Saturday sessions.

Yes but Faqqer already hit one problem. The technician wanted a new server, he didnt.

thats a conflict.

you want to send squads of benched contractors into the education system to create conflicts ?

[doodab]

you want to send squads of benched contractors into the education system to create conflicts ?

**** yeah. Imagine the money to be made sorting it out. This could run and run.

[BlueSharp]

This is not a bad idea for some of the youth:

https://youngrewiredstate.org/festival-of-code

[EternalOptimist]

**** yeah. Imagine the money to be made sorting it out. This could run and run.

exactemont. someone posting supply and demand threads in the same forum looking for the kerching of the middleman. maybe

[doodab]

If you let kids play with stuff and have fun they will learn all by themselves and they won't even realise they are doing it. We need a toy that is to programming what lego is to spatial reasoning, something that gets them doing it without even knowing about it.

The closest thing I can think of is probably bigtrak.