ICT in the Australian Curriculum

For some time now educrats at ACARA have been working on a new Australian Curriculum.

English, Maths, Science and History were covered in Phase 1 and are pretty much done and dusted. Phase 2 is now underway looking deeply at Languages, Geography and The Arts. Phase 3 is set to cover design and technology, health and physical education, ICT, economics, business and civics and citizenship.

ICT competence is listed as a general capability along with literacy and numeracy. Let's be clear, this is a Good Thing. But is it enough?

Should ICT be a distinct learning area? Should it be included with Design and Technology under the general heading 'Technologies'? That's what seems to be under consideration at the moment.

The Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) has just released a position paper and is seeking comments on their website.

http://acce.edu.au/nationalcurriculum


What do you think?

I think ICT is more like maths, arts and science than woodwork, cooking, jewellery making and textiles.

I do see a facet of the old 'trades' in ICT - there are profoundly technical hands-on elements to the body of knowledge encompassed in ICT technology. ICT certainly requires design and development skills and methods.

So maybe "Technologies" is right. But it doesn't feel right.

What about algorithmic or computational thinking? What about learning the basic skills needed to create ICT, not just use it?

ICT is not just about responding to a design brief - it's about dreaming the design in the first place. It's about making our lives easier and connecting us to each other. It's about solving problems using our brains, and getting machines to amplify, disseminate, sort and store our thoughts.

I know, I know. I'm probably just hopelessly idealistic and naive. But to me ICT seems very very different to woodworking, cooking and textiles.

Personal computers were only just being introduced when I was at school - now they are an integral part of all our lives.  I think we should all give some thought to the place of ICT in the new Australian Curriculum.

We should talk about it. Debate it.

Get involved.

geekgirl

DSC_2461 by Murray Wayper on Flickr

This geekgirl was at linux.conf.au earlier this year.

In the next few years she'll be turning up in someone's classroom.  Will that classroom be ready for her?

Wikipedia - To cite or not to cite? That is the question.

So - Wikipedia - http://www.wikipedia.org/

A handful of articles on the use of wikipedia bobbed up in the #edtech twitter stream this morning. Some food for thought on the use of wikipedia in education.

• Gwyneth Jones, "Wikipedia is NOT Wicked!" The Daring Librarian, USA. 6 Nov 2010. Web. 8 Nov 2010
• Christopher Dawson, "Teachers: Please stop prohibiting the use of Wikipedia." ZDNet, USA. 4 Nov 2010. Web. 8 Nov 2010
• Sarah Gonzalez, "Wikipedia Teams Up With Academia." National Public Radio, USA. 2 Nov 2010. web. 8 Nov 2010
• Karen All Cullotta, "Yes, students, there's a world beyond Wikipedia." Chicago Tribune, USA. 2 Nov 2010. Web. 8 Nov 2010
• "How to Cite a Wikipedia Article in MLA Format." WikiHow. Last edited 4 Nov 2010. Web. 8 Nov 2010

"Warning: Wikipedia is generally not an acceptable information source for academic papers and you may be penalized when using it as a reference. However, if for lack of time you do use Wikipedia as a source, do cite it as it is better to be marked down for using non-authoritative sources than to be accused of plagiarism."

Do you use Wikipedia?

Have you ever edited Wikipedia?

Open Source Options

I was invited to give a guest lecture for Nick Reynolds "ICT & 21st Century Learning Communities" unit at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.

He gave me a pretty open brief on what to cover - so I started with the presentation I prepared for this year's CEGSA conference. 20 Open Source apps your school could use. You can see the list and grab the slides from http://cc.com.au/oso

But the slides were really just background to a more relaxed Q&A on open source software in general, hearing examples from those in the room on whether or not they'd already encountered that particular application, some of the barriers to adopting Free Software, busting misconceptions and wondering why more people aren't just using it already.


The one thing I wanted to impress upon the group is that Free and Open Source Software is not cheap software. It's not about price, it's about freedom. I hope they got that as I explained the four freedoms to use, study, change and share software is what it's really about. It's not about scrimping on your IT budget.

Google Code-in

http://code.google.com/gci

Check out Google Code-in
http://code.google.com/gci

And... if you can, please spread the word.

This is a fantastic opportunity to get kids involved in real open source projects - using ICT, creating ICT - not just as busy work for assessment but making a real contribution to real projects.

There are tasks for everyone and every talent...

     1. Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
     2. Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
     3. Outreach: Tasks related to community management and
        outreach/marketing
     4. Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is
        of high quality
     5. Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending
        solutions
     6. Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
     7. Translation: Tasks related to localization
     8. User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or
        user interface design and interaction