Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

One of the problems here is that some students will invest the time in studying those subjects expecting to gain some benefit other than educational credit. IE they will want to actually learn something useful rather than just get some marks.

If someone does such a course in year 12 next year then the course would have been designed this year if not earlier (they need to get the training written in advance). So a year 12 student in 2014 would finish university no earlier than 2017 and look for work in 2018. It doesn't seem that a product specific training course from 2013 would be that useful in 2018. It would be about as useful as "MS Windows Vista" specific knowledge is right now.

That's why general (rather than product-specific) courses are so important. Students need to be taught the fundamentals, the concepts, the practical skills needed to pick up product-specific details on their own throughout a lifetime of interaction with software.

On Fri, November 22, 2013 1:25 pm, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

But having a variety of practical topics is equally important. If you want to get into IT trade, learning things like C#, MS SQL Server and Active Directory (or Java, Oracle 12c and OID) has no detrimental effect to achieving that goal. I don't consider doing VAX Macro programming back in the university waste of time, certainly not feeling sorry about that.

The debate over the general and the specific is an interesting one, but certainly from an educational perspective it is the former that should be taught and the latter that is then applied. Too many people who learn computers effectively are taught how to drive the machine without learning the mechanics - and as any vehicle mechanic will tell you, they are a *better* driver because of that knowledge. Likewise with computing, a person who is a *programmer* will find that they can apply their skills to whichever programming language that they encounter. A person familiar with *operating systems* will be a suitable sysadmin whether in a Mac, Linux, or MS-Windows world. The reverse however does not however directly apply. An excellent driver may very well scratch their head when they lift the bonnet. A great Pascal programmer may be all at sea when they encounter C#. An expert in French will not know where to turn when they encounter Cantonese.. if only they had picked up some linguistics along the way! My first computing experience was with the Apple II. The first paragraph of the instruction manual gave the beautiful words: "Lift off the lid". It then went on to explain where the CPU was and, briefly, what it did. Where the memory was and what it did, and where the I/O slots were, and what they did. After putting in the card for the diskdrive in the I/O, it then suggested putting the lid back on and working with the machine as a user. But every single user who read that paragraph now knew something general which applied to all computing... Hope this makes some sense, -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GCertPM, MBA mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

On Fri, November 22, 2013 2:33 pm, Daniel Jitnah wrote:

Lev, can you bring this manual at the next Beginners' if you still have it?

It's available online here: http://www.applelogic.org/files/AIIREF.pdf and http://www.applelogic.org/files/AIIEREF.pdf My recollection wasn't word-for-word perfect, but the principle was right.. I gave a talk at luv-beginners on hardware which had a special dedication to the author of the manual... http://levlafayette.com/files/2011-hardware-linux.pdf and notes (including a silly AMD joke) http://levlafayette.com/files/2011-hardware-linux.txt -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GCertPM, MBA mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:56:45 Brian May wrote:

On 22 November 2013 14:33, Daniel Jitnah <djitnah@greenwareit.com.au> wrote:

...

Really????? !!! I am amazed! ... what a long way has Apple travelled since!! .... trying to imagine a similar instr. manual for an ipad!!

From memory, you could get full technical details of the Apple II, as well.

I think it wasn't until the Macintosh that they started heading for closed systems.

IBM went the open approach and as a result had a lot of competition with cheap clones, sometimes of questionable quality or incompatible features.

My understanding is that IBM was somewhat open due to having some anti-trust cases against them in the 70's. Even so they didn't directly allow competition (EG by publishing specs for all BIOS calls and PC-DOS interfaces) but the BIOS had a clean-room reimplementation. I believe that the use of MS- DOS and CP/M on the IBM-PC was due to anti-trust cases, if MS-DOS hadn't beaten CP/M then we'd probably be using PCs designed for some sort of 32bit CP/M variant (which probably wouldn't be much different from MS-DOS). If IBM had been allowed to ship their own OS and no other OS then there wouldn't have been much competition.

The result was that IBM didn't get the sales they hoped for. Macintosh got the reputation of being more reliable, no compatibility issues, while being more expensive. So they didn't get the sales they hoped for either. The winner was the cheap IBM compatible computers.

The Mac was only compatible with other Macs. Not so compatible with other systems. One of the jokes about the movie "Independence Day" was that they had a Mac which can't talk to any other computer on earth talking to alien computers.

IIRC, Macintosh also had the advantage of having an OS providing an API to a range of services, not just a disk API. This was before I even heard of OS/2 or Windows. Which in turn meant Applications had to support all the possible variations in hardware support.

Yes having a proper OS was a real advantage. But Windows and OS/2 both had the same benefits along with memory protection to enforce them before the Mac had memory protection. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

I'd suggest that a more appropriate way to teach students about the things you mention is to have them included in a generic IT Curriculum in the appropriate context and in a balanced way and on equal standing with other non-MS platforms. The important thing is that students can make genuine informed comparison and decisions. That's a life skill. You can hardly imagine that, for example a MCSE course will highlight the deficiencies of a MS product or dev. platform. And thats a very serious lacking. The issue is that these are learnt in the context of MCSE certification, and all the bias that goes with that. Cheers Daniel On 22/11/13 13:25, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

But having a variety of practical topics is equally important. If you want to get into IT trade, learning things like C#, MS SQL Server and Active Directory (or Java, Oracle 12c and OID) has no detrimental effect to achieving that goal. I don't consider doing VAX Macro programming back in the university waste of time, certainly not feeling sorry about that.

Regards

Slav

...

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That's why general (rather than product-specific) courses are so important. Students need to be taught the fundamentals, the concepts, the practical skills needed to pick up product-specific details on their own throughout a lifetime of interaction with software. "This e-mail and any attachments to it (the "Communication") is, unless otherwise stated, confidential, may contain copyright material and is for the use only of the intended recipient. If you receive the Communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete the Communication and the return e-mail, and do not read, copy, retransmit or otherwise deal with it. Any views expressed in the Communication are those of the individual sender only, unless expressly stated to be those of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, or any of its related entities including ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited (together "ANZ"). ANZ does not accept liability in connection with the integrity of or errors in the Communication, computer virus, data corruption, interference or delay arising from or in respect of the Communication."

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On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, "Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:

Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:

...

But having a variety of practical topics is equally important. If you want to get into IT trade [...]

That is what polytechnics are for, not unis.

We are talking about high school here. So the question is whether high schools should be considered to be a feeder system for universities or for polytechnics. I think that the current system of giving all secondary schools the same goals is a bad one. The needs of kids who are destined to drop out at 16, the kids who will finish school but not do university, and the kids who are going to university are very different and would be best met by different schools. I think that Slav's ideas would be most suitable to a school for kids who are going to get a job at McDonalds when they are 16. They would be somewhat suitable to a school for kids who plan to go no further than year 12, and totally unsuitable to a school for kids who plan to persue higher education. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:

Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

...

I think that the current system of giving all secondary schools the same goals is a bad one. The needs of kids who are destined to drop out at 16, the kids who will finish school but not do university, and the kids who are going to university are very different and would be best met by different schools.

Some systems separate children into these categories quite early. for example, apparently the German school system has separate curricula.

10 years ago some Dutch friends described the system in the Netherlands which apparently had 3 streams of schools for different levels of educational ability.

I understand and appreciate the benefits of such a model; the question is whether people who are misclassified have the opportunity to overcome their educational disadvantage and move up into the more intellectually rigorous stream destined for higher education. There will always be people who are pushed into the wrong stream, and the real problem is for those who are "downgraded" inappropriately.

I agree that this is a problem, particularly when students are assessed based on race (as happens in American schools that implement multiple streams). However I don't think it's necessarily any worse than the situation in Australia where there is a wide range of skill levels in each class and the kids who fall behind can't be helped. It seems to me that someone who's in the top of the class at a school for low achievers has a better opportunity to move to a different school and fit in than someone who's at the bottom of the class at a school for mixed abilities. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

(not replying to anyone specifically in this discussion, hence stripping out quotes. This is a summary of my experience/what I've been exposed to). There's a big problem in schools (particularly primary) where incredibly smart children (more so twice exceptional children) are seen as low achievers because of a learning difficulty, social skills not being what a teacher expects and so on. Or kids who are very aware they're different so they dumb themselves down to blend in, become disruptive or have low mood due to boredom and just generally hide how smart they are. Then of course you have the fallout from underachieving-- problems with self esteem, confidence, believing one is stupid, anxiety, depression, etc. All in primary school where there is often zero support and this carries over in to adolescence and often adulthood. A friend of mine is both a teacher and counsellor and works with parents to advocate for these children and to get them the right support in school and I've dealt with some of her work. For decades my friend and people like her have been banging their heads against walls trying to get the education system to help these kids. In their experience (decades worth!) it is rare for a teacher/school to recognise and/or fully understand the intellectual potential of the really smart kids to the point where they do their best to help the child. There are kids who are being refused entry in to accelerated programs/streams simply because they're not seen as 'smart' (in some cases, the child has had IQ assessments but the schools still don't buy it. "She's not gifted, her spelling is terrible", "he's not gifted, he doesn't interact well with his classmates" etc). There unfortunately is more refusal to believe this when the child has been assessed as exceptionally gifted (the needs of an exceptionally gifted child will be different to most kids in acceleration programs). Acceleration programs can be fantastic for many kids but sometimes they're still not enough for the students who are still not challenged which again can cause problems for the child. These kids may be rare but they're mostly not supported. When you have grade 3 kids working at middle-upper high school level maths and science (and just about everything else) when they're not at school, being put in to accelerated programs at primary level still won't be enough. In year 7 they're doing university level maths, so high school acceleration programs often won't help. These kids may be rare but regardless they should be supported. Sure, parents might get them help outside of school but at school, where they spend most of their day, they're unsupported. Some of my friends have very bright kids in select entry schools and they've been disappointed because the 'more challenging/intellectually stimulating curriculum' seems to involve giving the kids more assignments and home work, than actually providing the challenge/stimulation in the classroom. They're still finding the work easy to the point of being boring but the amount of written homework/assignments causes problems. Even if a child has a great teacher who wants to do their best, all it takes is a change of teacher or unsupportive senior member of staff to just screw everything up. I've met a few teachers who got in to teaching because they themselves are 2e and struggled at school despite being highly intelligent, they ended up quitting teaching because of the the overall refusal of other teachers/senior staff to recognise these children needed specific help and support. When you have senior school staff going to seminars where leading world experts in gifted education are presenting on the difficulties gifted kids face, then staff walk away with "I don't buy a word of it, gifted my foot, they're just precocious spoilt little brats", you have a big problem. Unfortunately this attitude is incredibly common, smart children are seen as brats or even 'dummies' and the parents are seen as pushy when they ask for support. Advocates who are teachers and gifted ed psychologists trying to speak up for these children often have their professional peers bad mouth them. Many of my friends are teachers and they all say they just can't help these exceptionally bright kids because there's no support structure for them, or their colleagues just refuse to even try to understand. Another acquaintance of mine specialises in gifted ed and special ed and she gives lectures to students in teaching courses and has been shocked by how many students (and their lecturers) refuse to believe what she is saying. There are bright kids getting supported and really enjoying programs they're in. But the kids who require even more than this don't seem to be getting the support, which can lead to (in a nutshell) much unhappiness for them. If anyone is interested in this topic, Prof. Miraca Gross has written extensively on the subject of exceptionally gifted children. Again, my comments are not a direct response to anyone who has participated in this thread. faye -- Faye Coker faye@lurking-grue.org