PC Pro's attempts at the ICT GCSE

[RobC]

Well, my new PC pro arrived yesterday and I got a round to reading some of it today. There's a VERY interesting column on the state of the ICT GCSE. I'm not going to rewrite the column for you, but suffice to say that the PC Pro team attempted the Higher 2007 paper from the AQA website and the results make interesting reading!

 

The past-papers can be found here.

 

The web-article detailing the scores, etc can be found here.

 

Regards,

 

Rob Cowan

Carrobes IT

[el8linuxel8]

i took the edexcel one about 4 years ago, but they a practical exam which makes things easier.

[tech_guy]

Well we all know the teaching of ICT in the UK is a pile of stewed poo. We should be teaching the kids how to use a computer properly and how to program.

[Gatt]

Our kids are on OCR here - but are guarunteed a pass cos majority (about 90%!) is done for them! so long as they attend classes and any "revision sessions" then they pass!

 

Bloody ridiculous IMHO..

 

(My personal view and independant from the school!)

[Friez]

It's always been this diabolical. The course content taught at School/College level in general is quite dumbed down and very easy, but when it comes to the exam you get presented with poorly written ambiguous claptrap or things so stupidly easy that you could probably guess the answer even if you didn't know what a computer actually was.

 

My IT GNVQ exams were a joke. Completed them in 10 minutes, spent the remaining 1 hour 50 minutes doodling nice images for the examiner on THE PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK.

 

Intentionally blank, probably to give me some space to keep my mind filled while I have to sit in silence for approx 2 sodding hours wasting my life away.

 

We're talking mind numbingly easy multiple choice questions that I thought were an april fools joke come late. Example of the intellectual level they tested us on:

 

Which of the following is an Input Device?

A) Squirrel

B) Mouse

C) Gerbil

D) Ferret

 

AMAZINGLY some people actually failed that exam which makes me think that we are failing as a species.

[Michael]

Which of the following is an Input Device?

A) Squirrel

B) Mouse

C) Gerbil

D) Ferret

 

I've had it called a rat a few times too And mouses instead of mice. All this coming from teachers

[Hightower]

I've had the question "What's the plural for mouse, is it mouses or mice".

[Ryan]

What's the collective noun for several mice? (computer ones, not furry ones)

 

An overindulgence?

[Guest Guest]

Its terrible isnt it. But its goes a long way at showing why the kids who leave school/uni with qualifications are absolutly useless at real life work.

 

I know myself, and ive been told by many many people, that i am very good at my job, yet i only got a B in ICT at GCSE. 2 mates of mine work for BIG companies, one in computer games and the other for a company who recruited him and took him over to the USA - both these mates didnt do well in ICT at school.

 

Ive said it for a very long time, ICT has absolutely feck all to do with computers. And GCSEs have got absolutely feck all to do with intelligence, and means nothing in the real world; I cant remember the last time someone asked me what grade i got in RE/etc at GCSE, can you?

[richard.thomas]

I've had it called a rat a few times too And mouses instead of mice. All this coming from teachers

 

 

Mouses is technically correct

[Friez]

2 mates of mine work for BIG companies, one in computer games

 

Hook me up!

 

I code games in my spare time (read: virtually no sleep) and I'm far better geared as a programmer than an IT Tech.

 

School did nothing for me, University helped a bit but I *really* learned stuff when I joined an open source project and actually made something for real. The problem these days is that most students are in a catch 22: Experienced people only want to hire experienced people, but if you've come out of school you're generally considered inexperienced.

 

Thus, Jobs are quite hard to land! (I think this goes a long way to explaining why I'm working in a school pushing toners around when I have a degree and all that lovely stuff )

Edited June 18, 2008 by Friez

[K.C.Leblanc]

I gave up GCSE IT,

[deanc]

This could explain the reason that a lot of schools are moving away from GCSE ICT to other courses such as ECDL, OCR Nationals and BTECs.

 

since the next generation of ICT teachers have come along that are ICT specialists as opposed to people that used to teach other subjects and ended up teaching ICT because the head once saw them turn a computer on.

 

Applied ICT is quite possibly one of the most boring courses to teach, is it any wonder that the students hate it as well. give me Computing any day.

[dhicks]

The article made some good points (i.e. GCSE ICT is dull to learn, dull to teach and out of date), but still made the same old error of assuming that GCSE ICT is intended for people going on to do IT-related degrees at university. It's not, it's a general all-round qualification, same as any GCSE - that's the idea of GCSEs, we shouldn't be having people decide on a straight-and-narrow academic career path at 14. If you want to do computer science or similar at university, do maths. Lots of maths. And applied maths (i.e. physics). And applied physics (i.e. chemistry - damn it, life imitates XKCD again!).

 

I'm inclined to think the getting-students-ready-for-an-IT-degree attitude is what's got GCSE / A-level ICT into such a mess in the first place. C'mon, A-level ICT - who needs to do database design at A-level? What's the point? If you'll be designing databases for a living you'll be off to do a degree or some further qualification, if not then you really don't need to know. GCSE is at least generally wider in focus, although immensely dull for your average 16 year old, tending to be focussed around office applications (word processing memos, making databases of customers) or office applications dressed up as something interesting (databases of CD collections).

 

Right, so with the above said, and to stop this turning into a "Gah! Kids today! No gumption!" kind of post, what would we EduGeek users prefer to see taught at GCSE? Bear in mind that this is a general, wide-level qualification - it's to get 14-16 year-olds thinking about IT in general, and they might go on to do IT stuff further (something vocational at a college if they maybe want to be a IT technician of some kind, or maths at A-level if they want to go do a degree). It should teach children to be critical users of modern IT equipment, able to use computer technology at home and as part of their job (but not to be their whole job, not at GCSE). I'd argue that includes "general office skills" like word processing, but that specific stuff should be left for something like a CLAIT - heck, our school does GCSE at Y10, and the exam is before summer half term. They could whizz through an optional "office skills" CLAIT or similar in the remaining half term after that and be all set for summer jobs and such.

 

--

David Hicks

[maniac]

I did my GCSE about 12 years ago, and back then you were taught about the actual workings of a PC, how it all linked together and all the theory surrounding it. I don't think they even cover that sort of information at 'A' level these days.

 

My 'A' level course we learnt programming in Pascal and Visual Basic as well as all the theory surrounding how the componants of a PC actually talked at low level, binary counting, how memory registers and the parts of a processor work, quite in depth stuff. I know for a fact they don't cover that sort of stuff until degree courses now. These days it's all about using a PC, and not about how they actually work.

 

Mike.

[Guest Guest]

As it happens I only dug up my A-Level IT book the other day. Some of the stuff in there is quite questionable to say the least. One part describes how people dont develope software for linux as it has such a small market share! lol I get what they mean but they made it out as though theres no point in making software for linux. If they had said there is little point making software for home users then yeah, to a point, they are right. But then again look at the likes of Ubuntu...

 

 

 

Anyway im quite interested in dhicks point. To me GCSE ICT is little more than training in being a secutary. That said, some of the things the kids are made to do is the complete opposite of the scale.

Web design - i really cant see how the govt. think there is time to teach kids web design as well as everything else they learn, within their 2 GCSE years. Anyone who knows anything about web design will tell you how long it takes to make a website properly, and as such the kids all seem to end the term with a crappy website taken from a template in dreamweaver, with bits and peices randomly copied into it from other websites they liked. Not to mention it is only compatible with IE, would get ripped to peices by the W3 validator, and ultimately teaches the kid nothing about the job of web design.

 

On the fun side we have multimedia. An IT teacher is currently putting a bid in to get macs so that she can use the "i" range of software. This software all integrates into eachother and as such is really easy to use, but as a consiquence of its easy, directed nature all the students seem to come out with very similar projects. Great, the software does exactly what the course wants of it but since when was a peice of professional multimedia software easy to use? No self respecting multimedia designer would use wizards to make their product. So i ask, what exactly is the value of this exercise?

 

There is no easy answer i guess but would this not be a better way of doing things? Teach the kids how to use their own initiative by giving them a foundation in how a computer works and how all the peices fit together; How does the file system work. Menu driven things and how to apply settings/options. Show them files being transfered about and how web/media content comes from Mr Server and how it magically appears on their screens. etc etc. Give them a basis on how to work out why the "silly" computer has not done as they expected and maybe they will learn from their mistakes.

 

We all know kids can work out how to use any peice of software if they want to; when was the last time a pupil asked you for a lesson on how to use MSN? Given a sound foundation there is no reason why the majority of pupils cannot work out alot of the functions of a software package on their own, they do not need to be guides through each stage of the process, or throw their work into a wizard to produce "standard fit" results.

 

Then, do one major project. Teach them more advanced techniques and go into more detail so that at the end of the year(s) they actually have something to show for their efforts. Being able to prove that you can use one program properly to create good results is surerly better than being able to show that you can use 10 differance peices of software to create half-assed attempts. Im sure i would have loved to do a project instead of doing something silly like a mail merge, but then with endless write ups of each step of the process. WTF does proving you can do something by documenting you doing it achieve? Surerly if you have a working model then you have done it correctly

 

 

Some schools may be quite good and as such disagree with me, but i can only go on my own experiances and observations. One observation was i was asked to take an IT lesson and let the kids play about with a physical computer. I stood there, took one apart, explained the function of the major bits, and put it back together again. I then told them to go away and do the same to their PC (shared between 2). I tell you i have never seen a class so quiet, even though some of the most disruptive pupils were present. Not one kid, disruptive or shy, boy or girl, failed to take part, seem genuinely interested and asking questions, and just thoroughly enjoy the lesson.

Next lesson they were back to "how to be a secutary" and as such went back to not paying attention, playing games, etc. So theres deffinatly the desire there to learn more about computers rather than MS office.

 

All i remember from GCSE IT from when i was at school is MS Office, and how completely boring it was, i guess some things never change. You could say "well you know how to use Office then dont you?". Well no, it was Office 97 and things have changed. I cant remember the last time i used Excel for anything more complicated than basic adding up of figures. I have never used access, yet i use proper databases alot (SQL). Word: you type, it appears, what more can i say? My point is the everyday tasks are that simple anyone of the next generation of workers should be able to figure it out for themselves. Any advanced applications will have training provided either by a specialist course or by their employer. I see little point in a half-assed attempt at learning a vast number of differant applications, you'd think it silly for an electronics teacher to try to show how to use a vast array of ICs, why is it differant in IT?

Edited June 18, 2008 by Guest