Re: [luv-talk] Urgent / Important: Is "Computer Science" Science?
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:59 PM, Donna Benjamin <donna@cc.com.au> wrote:
Hi all,
Submissions regarding the Draft Senior Science Australian Curriculum close **tomorrow**.
This article in today's age made me think... http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/science-subject-comes-under-fire...
Hang on - Where's computer science? Oh that's right it doesn't exist in the brave new world of the new Australian Curriculum. It's a general capability (ICT) or a "Technology" along with design, woodworking, cooking and agriculture - in a strand called "Digital Technologies"
I've been to a couple of Google sponsored workshops advocating for the promotion and redevelopment of computer science in high school. #CS4HS
So I have some thoughts on this. Perhaps you do too?
You have less than 24 hours to make a submission with your thoughts.
I don't think it really exists now. As many are aware the transition from Information Processing Technology (IPT) to Information Communication Technology (ICT) was completed in most states over half a decade ago. While ICT does cover programming and computer design the focus on 'how computers work' is replaced with 'make computers do work'. The difference is subtle (and I have oversimplified it!) however computer science requires an interest in the lowest levels of computer operation and that is no longer something students are exposed to. The transition in high schools has already had a very negative impact on the computer science departments of at least two universities I know of. The computing department of the university I attended is now almost empty and many of the courses were moved to the Business faculty. I know from friends who are now in their first and second years at other universities that this is not an isolated trend. As a result I think that just setting a syllabus that exposes high school students to computer science may not be enough any more. The root causes of why school boards have been moving away from computer science for the last decade are still there. And, those students that do express an interest may find their options for tertiary programs have been greatly reduced. I will still make a submission however, I fear community action is years too late for submissions to make a difference. While it may be a good start I think it's time the information technology community took an active roll in solving the issues computer science faces in schools. Edward
Edward Savage <epssyis@gmail.com> wrote:
As many are aware the transition from Information Processing Technology (IPT) to Information Communication Technology (ICT) was completed in most states over half a decade ago. While ICT does cover programming and computer design the focus on 'how computers work' is replaced with 'make computers do work'. The difference is subtle (and I have oversimplified it!) however computer science requires an interest in the lowest levels of computer operation and that is no longer something students are exposed to.
Do you mean assembly language, or do you have something else in mind?
As a result I think that just setting a syllabus that exposes high school students to computer science may not be enough any more. The root causes of why school boards have been moving away from computer science for the last decade are still there. And, those students that do express an interest may find their options for tertiary programs have been greatly reduced.
Could you elaborate those "root causes"? Also, how is the subject treated in countries that rank highest in standardized tests of primary and secondary school educational outcomes? From meory, Finnland, Singapore, Japan, Germany etc., are high on the list, but I haven't read the rankings - this is far outside my areas of central concern - cal it a longstanding interest in education.
On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Jason White wrote:
Also, how is the subject treated in countries that rank highest in standardized tests of primary and secondary school educational outcomes? From meory, Finnland, Singapore, Japan, Germany etc., are high on the list
Germany isn't, bad PISA results alarmed the public over the last years. Australia is always near the top of these lists, far ahead of Germany. But partly it may reflect on the tests: they do not test creativity. Germany has a quite good reputation for developing innovative products. It cannot be all bad over there.. In Germany education is matter of the states (there are 16), and the systems vary greatly, to a frustration of many. To get all 16 ministers of the states to agree on anything is a painfully slow process, and is ongoing. I have kids at school and see the introduced NAPLAN test as a step back. Just take this year: kids in year 4 and 6 are in mixed 3/4 and 5/6 classes. That isn't a bad thing and was done for a reason but.. There were NAPLAN tests for the year 3 and 5 kids. So, the school, to satisfy the public by achieving good results, focusses for the first term or so on the year 3 and 5 students - and my year 4 and 6 start to complain how boring it is. They would not learn anything. Sometimes I wonder whether that's the way of future: testing is everything, and creativity counts for nothing. Regards Peter
On 25/07/2012 12:32 PM, Peter Ross wrote:
There were NAPLAN tests for the year 3 and 5 kids. So, the school, to satisfy the public by achieving good results, focusses for the first term or so on the year 3 and 5 students - and my year 4 and 6 start to complain how boring it is. They would not learn anything.
NAPLAN is a total joke. They TEACH kids how to pass NAPLAN and forget about anything else when NAPLAN testing is close. So, kids learn how to do the tests, not how to do anything else.... and that makes the results worthless. -- Kind Regards AndrewM
On Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:32:20 AM Andrew McGlashan wrote:
NAPLAN is a total joke. They TEACH kids how to pass NAPLAN and forget about anything else when NAPLAN testing is close. So, kids learn how to do the tests, not how to do anything else.... and that makes the results worthless.
Lots of children considered by the school concerned to be "lower achieving" are told to stay home on the day of the test. This includes children with learning difficulties (eg dyslexia, dysgraphia) and high IQ children with learning difficulties. The effect of this on so many of these kids, who are already struggling with confidence issues, anxiety, their learning challenges and being 'different', is a genuine mental health issue. faye -- Faye Coker faye@lurking-grue.org
On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
NAPLAN is a total joke. They TEACH kids how to pass NAPLAN and forget about anything else when NAPLAN testing is close. So, kids learn how to do the tests, not how to do anything else.... and that makes the results worthless.
People aren't responsible for something these days. They are accountable. So we have to count.. Anyway, a while ago I rad a blog written by someone with interest in statistics who used available school-related data to find correlations between various factors. http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log#id360 Here is the best correlation he could come up with: "Per-capita income, on the other hand, matters. The percentage of students receiving lunch subsidies matters even more. In fact, this last factor (the precise calculation I used was adding the percentage of students receiving free lunch and half of the percentage of students receiving partially subsidized lunch) is the single best predictor of quant score that I've found so far. This is depressingly unsurprising: poverty at home is hard to overcome: hard enough for individuals, and even harder in aggregate." Then he tries to find other correlations: "But OK, even if the variations are small, they're there. So surely this is where those aspirational metrics like spending must come into play. Throwing money at students in school may not be able to counteract poverty at home, but doesn't it at least help? No. Students per Teacher? No. AP classes? No. Percentage of minority students? No. .. But charter schools do better relative to expectations, right? Nope." So.. the tests are measuring the financial status of the students' families;-) Regards Peter
On Jul 27, 2012 12:32 AM, "Andrew McGlashan" < andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
NAPLAN is a total joke. They TEACH kids how to pass NAPLAN and forget about anything else when NAPLAN testing is close. So, kids learn how to do the tests, not how to do anything else.... and that makes the results worthless.
Teachers are pressured to do that, not all of them do. Some teachers get very annoyed at the pressure, which I know from speaking to teachers I know personally.
On 27/07/2012 2:46 PM, Bianca Gibson wrote:
On Jul 27, 2012 12:32 AM, "Andrew McGlashan" <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au <mailto:andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au>> wrote:
NAPLAN is a total joke. They TEACH kids how to pass NAPLAN and forget about anything else when NAPLAN testing is close. So, kids learn how to do the tests, not how to do anything else.... and that makes the results worthless.
Teachers are pressured to do that, not all of them do. Some teachers get very annoyed at the pressure, which I know from speaking to teachers I know personally.
And if the teachers don't "do as they are told", the principal can sack them now? It's completely broken. Great :( A.
Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
And if the teachers don't "do as they are told", the principal can sack them now?
It's completely broken.
A potential solution, I suppose, would be to use a test for which it is not possible to prepare, but which reflects the student's level of over-all academic achievement. I think some of the tests designed by psychometricians are like this. One could also specifically prohibit test preparation, although that would be hard to enforce because the boundary between educating a class of students in skills that happen to be on the test, and giving test preparation, is not easy to demarcate. Other options that might help are: making the tests broad enough to cover the entire curriculum, or specifying their content only in general terms so that it's hard to do specific preparation.
On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> wrote:
Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> wrote:
And if the teachers don't "do as they are told", the principal can sack them now?
It's completely broken.
A potential solution, I suppose, would be to use a test for which it is not possible to prepare, but which reflects the student's level of over-all academic achievement.
Isn't the entire history of tests about the attempts to devise such tests and the way they have failed by students preparing for the test?
Other options that might help are: making the tests broad enough to cover the entire curriculum, or specifying their content only in general terms so that it's hard to do specific preparation.
Even if it wasn't for the fact that they were attempting to do that already, it would still be an overall failure in terms of education. One massive problem is that the curriculum isn't much good. English is the best example of this failure as it's mostly about essay writing when most people never write a fictional essay in their entire adult life. Calculus is often cited as a subject that's supposedly useless in adult life, but really it doesn't compare to writing fiction. A useful curriculum would start by replacing the current English subject with a subject about writing reports, email, and other documents that people actually write in the real world (for fun or money). They might as well add a section on Wikipedia to the English course as well as there are probably more jobs that involve editing Wikipedia (IE all political staff positions) than jobs that involve creative writing. Then there should be a mandatory subject about how to avoid being scammed. Having a minimum mathematical knowledge is usually justified on the basis of calculations related to money, but that's not much good if people carefully account for their money and send it to Nigeria! The entire school system is wrong, I'm not going to try and list all the ways. But it's basically a child-minding service / prison that somewhat meets the educational needs of about 70 years ago. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, Russell Coker wrote:
One massive problem is that the curriculum isn't much good. English is the best example of this failure as it's mostly about essay writing when most people never write a fictional essay in their entire adult life. Calculus is often cited as a subject that's supposedly useless in adult life, but really it doesn't compare to writing fiction.
I don't get that one. I am not sure whether I ever needed differential and integral calculus at work. I don't need the periodic table taught in chemistry either. At my work place it doesn't matter if I believe the Earth is flat. I don't believe that the next generations will get their knowledge from short tweets. You still need something that captures your imagination for more than 30 seconds. And whether it is in a written form, as an essay, a book etc, or visual, e.g. a movie, you need more than just presenting facts. You need a story line and skills to grab the reader's/viewer's attention. That's why Powerpoint presentations are such a bore. Many people think: three circles, five arrows and some labels are telling a story. They don't. If someone draws a little graphic as he speaks, it becomes more interesting because it accompanies the story. Writing essays is about telling a story. And that's a very useful skill. Regards Peter
Testing kids with a one size fits all test doesn't help the students who have different learning styles, anxiety or learning difficulties. There are children in the ' very superior' IQ range who fail tests because the tests are written, but the same kids could possibly blitz the test if allowed to do it verbally, or with frequent breaks, or allowed to stand on their heads. Then you have the kids who again may be in the higher IQ range, but if they have difficulties understanding the perspectives of others, chances are they will not petform well on english tests where there are questions asking how a character felt, why they acted a certain way and so on. Then you have the kids with sensory integration and processing difficulties, or auditory sensitivity, who have trouble even being in a class or test environment. Or the kids who may be profoundly gifted in some areas of mathematics but struggle in others (see dyscalculia). Then other kids with dyslexia, dysgraphia, highly visual spatial, etc etc. These are the kids who are told to stay home because they are considered 'low achievers' who will only contribute poor scores. Never mind that they are actually brilliant in many cases, or have superior talent in areas where they can make great contribution. There has been enough research in to underachieving kids, particularly those with higher intellectual potential. The results aren't pretty. The system causes these kids to fail all the time and things like NAPLAN are pointless exercises which do not reflect a child's strengths or knowledge in other areas. I know kids who were learning squares, cubes, square roots, algebra etc at age five but at age seven can not parrot their times tables and they are labelled as slow learners because of it. Faye -- Sent from my Xperia X10 Android phone.
At 04:29 PM 7/27/2012, Faye Coker wrote:
Testing kids with a one size fits all test doesn't help the students who have different learning styles, anxiety or learning difficulties. There are children in the ' very superior' IQ range who fail tests because the tests are written, but the same kids could possibly blitz the test if allowed to do it verbally, or with frequent breaks, or allowed to stand on their heads.
This is one of my big beefs with not only the education system, but also with the wider working world. There is too much emphasis on one style or way of being, and the problem is not limited to kids. Adult education has similar issues, and don't get me started on employers, where stock standard things such as interviews are an insurmountable barrier for people who would otherwise be able to excel in a niche in the right company.
Then you have the kids who again may be in the higher IQ range, but if they have difficulties understanding the perspectives of others, chances are they will not petform well on english tests where there are questions asking how a character felt, why they acted a certain way and so on.
That's me all over, I couldn't get English in Year 11 and 12, which was all about novel studies, and the characters. Never mind that I scored a very high mark (93%) in Year 12 physics without having to try, and 80% in chemistry, despite being bored with it, and not handling the endless string of lab reports well - i.e. performing well below my actual potential.
Then you have the kids with sensory integration and processing difficulties, or auditory sensitivity, who have trouble even being in a class or test environment.
I was (still am) one who is very prone to burnout, don't cope well with out homework or assignments, unless there is time in class for the latter. Not to mention executive function issues that mean I'm not well suited to the generalist roles that are most common.
There has been enough research in to underachieving kids, particularly those with higher intellectual potential. The results aren't pretty. The system causes these kids to fail all the time and things like NAPLAN are pointless exercises which do not reflect a child's strengths or knowledge in other areas. I know kids who were learning squares, cubes, square roots, algebra etc at age five but at age seven can not parrot their times tables and they are labelled as slow learners because of it.
The mentality behind these sorts of tests makes me angry. If the education system and the working world made minor adjustments to accommodate people who are different from the "norm", the payoffs would be huge. Not only would there be more people gainfully employed (and paying taxes), but we could have some extremely innovative industries, driven by the diversity and creativity of many unique people. 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com
On Fri, 27 Jul 2012, Tony Langdon <vk3jed@gmail.com> wrote:
This is one of my big beefs with not only the education system, but also with the wider working world. There is too much emphasis on one style or way of being, and the problem is not limited to kids. Adult education has similar issues, and don't get me started on employers, where stock standard things such as interviews are an insurmountable barrier for people who would otherwise be able to excel in a niche in the right company.
The general HR processes fail to even assess mostly average people. It seems that small companies are better in this regard because they are more focussed on results. One of my clients seems to have specialised in hiring people who wouldn't fit the corporate HR model and it's worked well for them for 20 years. The thing is that they just want to get the job done, convince the owner that you can do the job and you'll get hired, no credentials needed. Big corporations don't care so much about getting the job done. If they hire someone who doesn't perform then the company will keep going regardless.
The mentality behind these sorts of tests makes me angry. If the education system and the working world made minor adjustments to accommodate people who are different from the "norm", the payoffs would be huge. Not only would there be more people gainfully employed (and paying taxes), but we could have some extremely innovative industries, driven by the diversity and creativity of many unique people.
If the big corporations made minor adjustments to try and run efficiently then the payoffs would be huge. For example there have been a few occasions when I've noticed ways that a company could save some millions of dollars in software or hardware, every time I've mentioned that I've received absolutely no interest from management, they had budgetted to spend a lot of money and there's no need to decrease it. If a company is going to needlessly spend millions on extra hardware or software then needlessly spending hundreds of thousands on extra staff because hiring one person who could do the job properly is too hard isn't going to be a big deal. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
At 05:05 PM 7/27/2012, Russell Coker wrote:
The general HR processes fail to even assess mostly average people. It seems that small companies are better in this regard because they are more focussed on results. One of my clients seems to have specialised in hiring people who wouldn't fit the corporate HR model and it's worked well for them for 20 years. The thing is that they just want to get the job done, convince the owner that you can do the job and you'll get hired, no credentials needed.
I agree totally about small companies. The last place I worked for was one of those companies where being able to do the job was the important thing. The directors were selective about getting the right people for the job they had in mind, and what was on paper, or how well one could "play the interview game" didn't count for much with them, the real criteria was whether they felt the person could perform the role they had a vacancy for, and how well they could do it.
If the big corporations made minor adjustments to try and run efficiently then the payoffs would be huge. For example there have been a few occasions when I've noticed ways that a company could save some millions of dollars in software or hardware, every time I've mentioned that I've received absolutely no interest from management, they had budgetted to spend a lot of money and there's no need to decrease it.
If a company is going to needlessly spend millions on extra hardware or software then needlessly spending hundreds of thousands on extra staff because hiring one person who could do the job properly is too hard isn't going to be a big deal.
Then we have a problem with the economic system rewarding inefficiency and mediocrity, rather than excellence. Sadle, I don't have any answers for that particular problem. People are too busy feathering their nest and building empires than getting the job done properly. :/ 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com
Faye Coker wrote:
I know kids who were learning squares, cubes, square roots, algebra etc at age five but at age seven can not parrot their times tables and they are labelled as slow learners because of it.
I *still* can't remember 6 or 8 times tables, because when they tried to teach them to me, I said "this is stupid. Just use 3s or 2s" -- i.e. prime factorization. This turned out to be a poor optimization, since now when I am e.g. in the supermarket trying to do division in my head, I quickly blow my 7±2 stack (which is definitely on the -2 side)...
At 06:28 PM 7/27/2012, Trent W. Buck wrote:
I *still* can't remember 6 or 8 times tables, because when they tried to teach them to me, I said "this is stupid. Just use 3s or 2s" -- i.e. prime factorization.
This turned out to be a poor optimization, since now when I am e.g. in the supermarket trying to do division in my head, I quickly blow my 7±2 stack (which is definitely on the -2 side)...
Times tables were easy. They're ordered, and I could use recognition tricks to make sure I recalled the right values. Now, I use similar tricks to speed up rough mental arithmetic, good for working out ballpark figures (which are often surprisingly accurate!). I've been able to make Canadians believe we use Farenheit down here, because they heard me quoting temperatures in Farenheit to Americans (converted in my head in real time), and I then had to tell them no need to convert for me, I was doing it for the Americans! :D It definitely pays to know your strengths and find ways to use them. 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com
participants (9)
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Andrew McGlashan -
Bianca Gibson -
Edward Savage -
Faye Coker -
Jason White -
Peter Ross -
Russell Coker -
Tony Langdon -
Trent W. Buck