Christopher Dawkins <cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk> wrote:
I agree that many teachers of ICT (and hence their students) would have considerable difficulty transferring their existing ICT skills to alternative open-source applications. But why?
Rather the non-portability of ICT skills as taught in schools and elsewhere simply reflects the comparative immaturity of today's ICT curriculum.
True. It reflect training rather than education, though we aim for transferable skills in most other subjects. It's as if we were producing mechanics who can only service Ford cars, historians who know only the late Victorian period, artists who can paint only in charcoal, philosophers who know only Kant. All this is fine as a specialisation or in old age, but we are producing young people (and young teachers, defined for IT purposes as under the age of fifty-five) who are not only restricted in their range but - much worse - who are determined not to learn anything else.
But this is exactly the point of the KS3 National Strategy ICT strand. To increase the rigour of knowledge and understanding. The move is away from training to education. I applaud the effort. -- Colin McQueen