Re Curriculum.

Hi Donna and all
My daughter teaches ICT at a private grammar school and understands that computer is considered a lower level subject.
There is no help, recommended reference books are useless, containing wrong information are so out of date it's embarrassing. At xmas just gone she rewrote one of the recommended books to something more relevant.

She writes her own class tutorials because none exist.
She observes that there is no link between years 11/12 and university year1/ 2.
Her class sizes have grown from 5 to 26 in 2 years and demand is escalating.
She finds that parents, while they may not understand what their child is doing, genuinely want their kid/s to head in the right direction and there is nothing to guide them in decision making so they rely on her knowledge from her courses at Swinbourne.

My personal observation, and I may be wrong here, is that the folk in the education department try their best but are out of touch with modern Computer industry requirements year 7 to Uni Graduation.

Education Department curriculum is so basic that her classes could go through the whole thing in a couple of months, so she stretches them with some pretty in depth python programming and complex 3D animation with Blender, way beyond curriculum expectations
She notes that Blender is on the curriculum but there are virtually no skilled teachers, so she is writing tutorials to teach teachers how to teach Blender. She needs help with this due to her having very little time to devote to it.

My opinion would be that Computer science becomes science when individuals head toward their thesis, before that it is Technology and far broader in scope than allowed for in any curriculum.

Anyway that's my 2c worth.


Roger