Trust Slashdot to come up with an article that's completely relevant to what you've been thinking of for the past few days... At my school, I am an IT Leader, which means that I'm generally quite good with computers. Yesterday, I sat down with my fellow IT leaders and talked about a similar situation of that in the aforementioned article, and what needs to be done about it.

I can recall that as little as 9 years ago, within my entire school, there were no more than 10 computers for student use (K-6), and even then, there was very little work done on them. Maybe the occasional educational game, but not much more. Skip forward to 2005, and the same school in the same year groups have over 100 computers between them, all being used for varying degrees of work. Walls are covered with word-processed documents, and third-graders are performing PowerPoint Presentations. So why is it that a great majority of students from this school (and many others in the area) come out of Year 12 not knowing how to properly use a computer?

So, it's obvious that between 1996 and 2005, a radical change in thinking has occurred in the minds of senior officials, and IT has become fairly high up on the agenda. Since computers have become a major part of everyday life (I doubt anyone will deny that) in that timespan, schools have seen the need to adjust. So, policies have been written to give Computers and IT a more central role in the classroom. I can hardly blame them for implementing them - students need some form of training for their workplace, where they will be using some form of office software: Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations. So, schools have adjusted their curricula to include writing all assignment essays in English using a Word Processor, performing maths equations using Excel, and backing up their History talks with PowerPoint Slides. This is definitely not a bad idea. These programs will probably have some great use in the workplace.

The only real problem behind these policies (which aparrently exist at the vast majority of schools) is that they assume that all students know how to use these software packages.

Yes, it is right to assume that the majority of students may have looked at Microsoft Word before, and maybe typed a few things into it, but no-one is taught specifically how to use a word processor - how to format a document properly, how to make your text look good, or anything of the sort. Using a Word Processor is assumed knowledge. Why is this the case? Although my generation is supposedly the most computer-literate ever, if you took a random sample of the student population, it would be highly likely that 50% of them could not centre text on a page, 80% of them would not know how to effectively search for information on Google, the list goes on. So, if these skills are going to be required for the rest of a student's life, then why aren't they taught? To give an idea of when these skills actually get taught, the first time I was ever taught how to insert a table into a word processor document (not to say I didn't already know,) was in an optional computing class in Year 11. So, the knowledge a student needs to write an essay is required in Year 9, but the skills needed to write it up effectively are not taught until Year 11.

In Years 7 and 8, students are taught how to effectively write essays, so that when they face their final exams in Year 12, they know how to structure an argument. They are taught the basics of Algebra so that when they are told about Calculus, they don't all simultaneously pass out. So, why is it that with computers, fostering the knowledge of how to use them properly is completely neglected, and then in later years completely assumed?

Computing, as is agreed by most people, is a necessary cornerstone of curriculum, which is why it has become integrated into most facets of subjects. However, the way it is gone about being taught is completely wrong. In at least years 7 and 8, students, just like in all other subjects, need to be taught the basics of computing, so that they can apply these skills to other areas. The way to do this is not by teaching them in an applied sense. These skills need to be taught in the most pure form they can be, in other words, dedicated computing classes need to be taught. It is no different to applying skills learned in maths to physics problems (Physics, of course being a different subject), and skills learned in English to History. The only difference is that the skills learned in Computing will be able to be applied to almost all subjects, since that is the expected norm nowadays.

The advantages of teaching dedicated Computing classes (as a key subject), apart from what I have already outlined earlier is that Teachers of non-Computing classes will no longer have to spend a large amount of time teaching students how to go about doing things with computers, and will be able to spend much more time teaching their own subjects (probably enough time over a year to justify giving time to teaching Computing as a separate subject).

As popular as IT may have become in schools, it is still in the dark ages as to how it may be used effectively in teaching students. And maybe if students are better-educated at schools, perhaps we can avoid the situation in that /. article.

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