
71% of students learn more about IT at home than school - jkaufman
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6066993&navcode=94
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burgerbrain
_In other news, 29% of students are under-educated about IT._

Seriously though, I think it's clear, at least in CS, that if you only do your
coursework you'll be left far behind your peers and what employers expect from
you. It _has_ to be something you can be passionate about on your own. Getting
A's in all your classes but never doing anything outside of them isn't good
enough.

~~~
evilduck
I have to disagree. Passionate programmers have side projects all the time,
school or work. But you can successfully be a completely mediocre (dare I say
average?) programmer by just doing your classwork.

The typical Java and .Net business programming jobs out there require people
who are absolutely lacking passion, otherwise they couldn't bear the day-to-
day tasks. These jobs are not really desirable to good programmers, but they
are the majority of opportunities out there.

~~~
burgerbrain
You will never find a above average programmer that _isn't_ in some way
passionate about what they do.

And really, "average" isn't really a good word to use here. People are idiots,
but technically speaking your average person is of average intelligence. Those
of us who consider ourselves to be in a higher tier generally consider
"average" to be very sub-par.

~~~
evilduck
Point taken, I didn't mean to deride the average person, but my issue was with
employers only wanting passionate or above average programmers. _Exceptional_
opportunities want exceptional people. But my point was that most
opportunities in our field are not exceptional and that it doesn't take much
academic effort or ability to successfully meet their requirements. The
student who has a firm grasp of OO concepts and can write a little SQL can
handle 90% of the jobs you'll find on Dice/Monster/Craigslist/etc. Business
requirements programming just isn't that academically demanding.

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mbenjaminsmith
Software as we all know it today is inseparable from the internet. Like a lot
of learning or information exchange on the interent, it's largely a peer-to-
peer activity (software being the exemplary). Academia is hierarchical and
relies on a specialist gathering, filtering and preparing information to
disseminate to many. The former is more error-prone but also much faster.

Or another way to look at it: If young John Resig builds a tool that will save
you time, should you wait for your professor to learn about it and teach you
or learn about it from John himself? I'm not knocking academia (there's a lot
of theoretical work going on in CS that's invaluable to the industry), but
your professor is professional educator, not a professional programmer, so her
needs and your needs (to have the right tools to build things competitively)
are not perfectly aligned. In many fields the difference is probably
inconsequential, but in something as rapidly changing as software I think it
makes all the difference.

I've seen the effects of this lag in a different way living in Thailand. Since
most of the developers here do not learn English well enough to work/research
in the language, they're ability to learn new technologies is slowed waiting
for the handful of bilingual developers that exist to learn them and then blog
about them in Thai. The effect is that the technology base here is horribly
outdated. New _products_ are built aggressively, but they're almost all built
on yesterday's tech. (The formal education system here is notoriously bad, but
that's a different story.)

~~~
DTrejo
Another way to look at this:

If you come to the Thai market with knowledge of technologies that allow you
to execute better and faster than the locals, you might have an advantage.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
Maybe, if you can find people willing to pay above local rates (which are
abysmal). I don't ever work locally here but I have a friend that did web dev
for years. He just barely made a living and eventually sold him company to
pursue other things.

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socksy
I have found from my own experience that ICT teaching is quite shoddy, and a
waste of time at best. This has been confirmed by accounts from friends and
family at other schools.

Most teaching revolves around the ability to use certain microsoft products
(Word, Excel, Outlook and Access if you're "lucky"). In some cases, they may
even teach you Dreamweaver. I remember one lesson being taught to create
websites in Dreamweaver - we were told to use tables to design the website,
told off for viewing the HTML or heck, even changing the view mode so that
each panel was a window.

I trialled (and have friends and family at different schools that actually
did) a GCSE ICT exam, and I was somewhat bemused at a program that simulated
XP, in which the purpose was to do a number of tasks (designated by an Outlook
lookalike program) such as create a database, write a word document etc. The
program would record every mouse click and keystroke, whilst timing how fast
you did each task.

It depresses me that that is what people regard as computers in this day and
age. The teachers were often primarily of another subject (Art, for example),
and refused to teach at a rate faster than "don't you DARE press OK in that
alert! Has everyone got that alert? Right! Now press OK!".

I also find this disappointing:

 _“There is confusion between teaching IT, and using IT as part of the
learning process,” Mr Fish said._

This seems to be very fashionable in many schools across the UK. I have no
idea why - is French better taught through the medium of computers? Does the
use of interactive whiteboards really increase productivity and ability to
learn - or even attentiveness amongst pupils? Certainly Maths and English were
not helped by an increase in technology, at least in my opinion. And exactly
what are the pupils learning about IT in the process?

When top CS departments across the UK scorn ICT/IT A Levels/GCSEs, and in some
cases appear to treat them as anti-requisites (Cambridge list ICT as a soft
subject and I remember Oxford jokingly say at an open day that they look at
candidates more favourably if they hadn't been taught ICT before), and when
they don't appear to be teaching pupils anything that will be much use in the
workforce (or rather, stuff that they don't already know that will be any use
in the workforce) - what exactly is the point?

~~~
al05
Pretty much every Uni in the UK, pretty much says when you join Computer
Science, forget everything you learned in ICT lessons. I did Btec ND
electronic/computer engineering at college, which gained me more respect
points with uni profs.

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ahi
I teach ICT courses at the University level and provide tech support for a
non-ICT department as well so I see both sides of this. Simply put, no one has
frakking clue what they're doing. Many profs are completely clueless in
content and instruction while many students have no idea what they don't know.
This shouldn't be too surprising since the field is so new. Even the leading
tertiary schools are still figuring out their own ICT curriculum. Second tier
schools and secondary schools are completely without guidance. ICT needs
another decade or two for instruction to catch up.

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erikb
The topic mislead me a little. Of course it's a problem, that the younger
generation grows up with something, that is maybe harder to understand for
their teachers, because they didn't grow up with it.

On the other hand, learning is something that happens at home, right? School
mainly has the reason to help you structure your learning process, help you
with finding exercises and good literature, evaluate your process with exams,
answer the questions you have and last but not least kick your ass, if you
can't motivate yourself. That you learn something while in school is actually
not part of the schools description. So I wonder, how much these 29% "school
learners" actually know about IT.

What the teachers need is a natural way of using technology in their classes.
For that, they themself must start to use it at home. All these "Web2.0 Online
Learning Platforms" that are actually just small CMS to download ppts can not
really be all that is to it. My mother changed her major a short while ago and
started studying to be a teacher for highschool. She actually thinks that
these PPT-CMS systems and IRC-in-browser-integration are(!) Web2.0.

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danpker
The title is a little misleading considering the actual title is, "Pupils
think they know more than ICT teachers".

~~~
brudgers
Seeing as they are 16-18 year olds of course they think they know more about
IT...and everything else.

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bugsy
Not just IT, but nearly all subjects are actually learned mostly outside
school. The exceptions are a few topics such as indoctrination into
propaganda, and learning docile obedience to authority, which do happen mostly
at school.

Falk and Dierking found that 95% of science education happens outside of
school. They also found that American adults have greater scientific literacy
than the adults of any other nation. Americans only do worse when they are in
state schools. Once they are free from them, they become educated.

[http://caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/FalkandDierking95perc.pd...](http://caise.insci.org/uploads/docs/FalkandDierking95perc.pdf)

If one wants a more educated populace, the answer is less school, not more.
School makes people ignorant, docile, obedient, and kills their natural
curiosity and creativity. Also puts them into crippling debt if they keep on
the treadmill too long.

~~~
moxiemk1
When you define words and phrases like "subjects," "docile obedience,"
"science education," "scientific literacy," "educated," "school," and
"ignorant" differently than their common usage (as you have done), it is
possible to make an argument that says whatever you want, really.

~~~
bugsy
Sorry do you have sources? I posted a citation to a reliable study. Sorry you
don't like it. I'm surprised you were able to read it so quickly, you must be
a really fast reader.

Here's a column of feedback from readers to the study:
[http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/getting-
science-...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/getting-science-
education-right)

I know right, it says "american scientist", based on your comment, that must
seem like an oxymoron to you since "everyone knows" americans are stupid and
don't do science. I'll be sure to mention that to Neil Armstrong next time I
see him.

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peter_l_downs
The article didn't say where in the education system the surveyed students
fell, but as a highschool student in the US I know this is definitely true.
The majority of the students who attend the school I go to, which is actually
pretty equipped in terms of modern computers, know more than the teachers do
about how to use computers (and I'm not talking about updating a status on
facebook). Sure, there are outliers, like the few teachers who do program in
their spare time, and the few students who don't really know how to do
anything with their computers, but my statement stands.

As to learning about IT at school versus at home, I know that _I_ learned more
about computers at home but other students really didn't know much about
computers until we were lent them by our school and used them in the
classroom.

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johnohara
_According to figures released by Microsoft, 58 per cent of 16 to 18-year-
olds currently in education believe they have a better understanding of IT
than those charged with teaching them._

What this actually describes is a lack of respect for instructors who are
unable or unwilling to work with students on challenging and difficult
problems.

The truth is, most students this age are very good at applying technology but
very unsure about creating technology. When you successfully strip away the
marketing terms and start going after the actual concepts, it's remarkable how
quiet the room gets.

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Jupe
I would guess that technically savvy (I mean really savvy) people are much
better compensated outside of the education system.

I'd be curious how many readers on this site would even consider a teaching
career. Personally, I'd love to teach, but lets face it, the pay just isn't
that great.

