Student who doesnt feel challenged enough in ICT

[victory2012]

So just had a meeting where I had to give evidence about a student who has been caught looking on hacking sites, made his own programs in visual basic to attempt to hack the network and something he said has got me thinking...

 

One of the reasons the student says he did this was because he didn't feel challenged in IT as all they do in ICT is power points etc.. which i can understand Ive been there too when i was younger and managed to run doom LAN across all the computers in the IT suite during lunch lol..

 

I'm just wondering has anyone got any suggestions, we are thinking are there any companies out there that offer a kind of course or will come in and talk to some of our "gifted" ICT students, i think whats concerning is these kids are not being challenged in ICT and going off and looking up hacking/programming etc.. and i wonder if they are just too smart for our current ICT course...

 

has anyone come across any of these kids like this and had any suggestions for the school on how they tackle it? personally i feel if these students are given the right direction they will probably be network managers in the future unless we have all been put in the cloud by then

[elsiegee40]

The obvious thing is a 'computer club' of some sort where they can be challenged with Raspberry Pi, hardware maintenance or whatever

[GrumbleDook]

There are a couple of ways of approaching this, some educational, some behavioural and some common sense.

 

Stretching more able children is a problem in many schools, across all subjects. In English you get students bored with the set text, in PE you get young athletes bored of having a kick about with a football and in ICT you get folk bored with a basic curriculum.

 

None of these is a valid excuse for breaking any law (Computer Misuse Act) but schools need to spot the problem early and address it.

 

The answer will vary between schools and between students. Here are a few things that could be covered though.

 

The fact that some of the work is boring it doesn't mean that isn't needed. Whilst having a kick about in PE can be a waste of time, it might be that the lessons is about demonstrating the results of skill drills ... it just isn't communicated very well, or the student doesn't want to listen. Likewise in ICT it might be boring to demonstrate correct use of presentation software based on previous lessons, but until they show they can do it then how can they justify moving on to the next level. It could be that a condensed curriculum and independent learning will help. In each ICT lesson they have half the time to do the same work as the other students, and once they have completed the work they can crack on with special projects. Ideally it would be related to what they are already doing. If they are working on presentation software then this could be coding in HTML5, developing a back-end data base to store information which will be displayed (eg a digital signage solution) and so on. These are extension tasks.

 

The student needs help in understanding that pretty much all work out there will involve some mind-numbingly boring stuff at some point. Being able to deal with it, focus and get the job done is a valued skill. Musicians will play scales, athletes will train and do skill drills, copywriters will make us sample customers ... coding is often about reuse of code, or trying to find different ways of getting code to do the same thing.

 

The other problem is that the teacher(s) involved also need to be talked with to see if this is part of an isolated issue or a wider problem with the school's approach to G&T. Even in the same department, using the same resources, you can find one teaching who is engaging and keeps all students working hard and another whose delivery leaves a lot to be desired. ICT does not have to be boring (in spite of some groups saying it all is) ... so the subject and matter is not the issue. The approach and the individuals (teachers and students) are usually where the issue lies.

 

Groups such as Computing@School are good to get advice from.

[twin--turbo]

has anyone come across any of these kids like this and had any suggestions for the school on how they tackle it?

 

Yes , No

 

Rob

[pete]

We've run informal lunchtime programming clubs with before that were well received by the kids. 95% of it was giving them a hand and constructive feedback with stuff they're doing in their own time. Often they just want someone sufficiently geeky to talk to about their project.

[witch]

Get involved with STEM and they will come out and help run programming clubs etc:

STEMNET

A very underused resource for all schools, they do primary as well as high schools.

 

Get your SLT to speak to a local ambassador to see what help there is out there

[rad]

Here at our secondary KS3 do Flash, Scratch, Dreamweaver etc ie more advances Macromedia and Adobe products.

In KS4 they do a lot of CS3/4/5/6 programs, ie Premier, Flash, etc etc

 

Does this student need more ICT software stuff than teaching them to hack a computer network?

[Netwacky87]

I was no where near stretched enough during ICT lessons, found them dull...boring and pretty pointless as it wasn't something I wanted to do when I got into my career. I knew this. I was always trying to hack the school network and the techs' and I had a very good relationship, I would help them make the network secure (One once told me that it was purposely open...hmmmm lol) I would give the student some networking lessons, how to setup AD at lunch computer club etc.

[enjay]

Lunchtime or after school clubs would be one option. We've done CC4G (Computer Club for Girls) in the past, sure there'll be a mixed equivalent.

 

Set up a secure/separate sandbox network for them to play around in, so they can still use the skills they want to use without risking the school network.

 

Take them on as an apprentice/assistant in IT Support.

 

As others have said, their creativity and enthusiasm shouldn't be squashed, but it should be channeled appropriately, also they need to understand the dangers of what they were doing, and why it was wrong (again, explain and educate, don't chastise).

[gshaw]

I was no where near stretched enough during ICT lessons, found them dull...boring and pretty pointless as it wasn't something I wanted to do when I got into my career. I knew this. I was always trying to hack the school network and the techs' and I had a very good relationship, I would help them make the network secure (One once told me that it was purposely open...hmmmm lol) I would give the student some networking lessons, how to setup AD at lunch computer club etc.

 

Very similar for me as well, was bored to tears when ICT lessons were just doing touch typing - I remember someone else crashing the main file server by doing exponentially growing copy \ pastes of "aaaaa sssss ddddd" on his home area (quotas were a hidden ini file and very easy to edit if you used File Manager, which seemed to happily ignore network permissions from what i remember!)

 

Fortunately the Network Manager saw I could be useful and starting teaching me A+ and fixing \ dismantling old PCs (I remember hunting for Intel Pro/100 cards in old boxes and the NM showing me how much faster 100Mb was compared to the old coax 10Mb network, those were the days )

 

The RasPi idea sounds like a good one, get them to find something they're interested in and create a project using it - even if it's XBMC installing a Linux distro etc is going to be more useful than what they're doing now.

Edited February 26, 2013 by gshaw

[Netwacky87]

I remember port scanning the senior tech's computer (I was about 14 at the time) and he came storming into the room and just went YOU! YOUR BANNED FOR A WEEK! lol Whoooooooops!

 

Incidentally, I came across a folder called "Pr0n" I wonder what was in there....

Edited February 26, 2013 by Netwacky87

[MatthewL]

I was similar at school, I got bored in IT, powerpoint was not teaching me anything, although our network was locked down I found loopholes.

 

Get the kid on your side, get him to help you out where he can, get him to find the loopholes and then fix them, teach him how a modern network works, servers, switches, routers and firewalls.

 

Get them on your side and find out what he wants to learn about don't discourage those who have an interest in it, just think many of us will have been in a similar position. I was left for ages and finally taken on board do do bits and bobs.

[dhicks]

we are thinking are there any companies out there that offer a kind of course or will come in and talk to some of our "gifted" ICT students

 

You might do better with a maths course - I found the applied/coursework parts of AS-level further maths to be interesting, very ameanable to be solved via computational methods and actually quite easy (the pure maths exam at the end was difficult, though). You could have them simply start working through the further maths curriculum, maybe even with a view to sitting the exam at the end if it's applicable. They are at school to learn, not to be trained for a particular career that might not exist by the time they leave education - they can pick up IT skills at any time in the future, but school is their best opportunity to actually get taught.

[NerdNamedMatt]

So just had a meeting where I had to give evidence about a student who has been caught looking on hacking sites, made his own programs in visual basic to attempt to hack the network and something he said has got me thinking...

 

One of the reasons the student says he did this was because he didn't feel challenged in IT as all they do in ICT is power points etc.. which i can understand Ive been there too when i was younger and managed to run doom LAN across all the computers in the IT suite during lunch lol..

 

I'm just wondering has anyone got any suggestions, we are thinking are there any companies out there that offer a kind of course or will come in and talk to some of our "gifted" ICT students, i think whats concerning is these kids are not being challenged in ICT and going off and looking up hacking/programming etc.. and i wonder if they are just too smart for our current ICT course...

 

has anyone come across any of these kids like this and had any suggestions for the school on how they tackle it? personally i feel if these students are given the right direction they will probably be network managers in the future unless we have all been put in the cloud by then

I actually got excluded for a week in May 2012 before I left school for getting into the Main Core and rebooting it, causing lessons to be disrupted for a good 20 minutes.

I personally feel that I would of benefited a HELL of a lot from some sort of "Work Experience" with the technicians at the school. I would of been learning much more useful things like how a network is run.

Nearly all kids coming out of Year 11 know near enough nothing about networking. The clever ones know about I.P. addresses, they may have touched on MAC addresses but that is about it. I have learnt much more in my month and a half working in ICT Support than I did in my 2 years of GCSE work or the 4 months of the A-Level work I did after leaving my school.

I am talking from my own experience and everyone is different.

[Mullaney18]

@GrumbleDook Is right, Get him to finish the curriculum first, If hes good, then he can finish it with a month or so spare, then, what I would do is get him a Raspberry Pi and let him discover Linux on his own.

 

If that isn't challenging enough, I would suggest Java...

Edited February 26, 2013 by Mullaney18