Fwd: [CESI List] Teacher-oriented Computer Course

[Paul Lee]

Guys, any ideas for this? Might be right up someone's street. Could Coderdojo come up with a strategy/ course for ICT for schools?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Lydon <peter...@iol.ie>
Date: Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 9:09 PM
Subject: [CESI List] Teacher-oriented Computer Course
To: cesi...@googlegroups.com

Looks good.
What would you do by way of coding – Java/HTML etc???

Peter


On 23/04/2012 20:37, "Stephen Howell" <stephen....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, 

I would like to develop a teacher oriented short course (1 semester, 12 weeks, part time) that taught 3 modules (off the top of my head): 

• a general computer science 101 module (history, everything but coding)
• introductory software development (coding)
• teaching strategies for teaching ICT (education stuff)
  

Again, just making these up on the spot. 

Big challenges to getting these courses designed, developed, signed off on and delivered.
No guarantee that anything we do becomes an accepted and official course at any level, 
but the aim would be to give confidence to teachers of all levels to teach coding in the 
classroom, regardless of TY/primary/LC course.

I would welcome suggestions though.

Regards,

Stephen

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[Will Knott]

The ICS are discussing this in Dublin tomorrow... got the impression that a few bodies from the department of education are going to be at it is to look at the secondary syllabus and not just a short course.

Take care,
Will

[Paul Lee]

Cool... Hopefully there will be some forward motion. One of the problems is the fact that IT is a moving target, not suited to slow-moving syllabus creation. I think of the time that I put a question to a FETAC executive regarding new course creation.She indicated that this was the exception rather than a norm.... This is just not feasible for the modern world, which tends to change every now and again.
-- 
Paul Lee

[Shane Marks]

HTML isn't a programming language (nor is CSS).

Personally I'd never teach someone Java as their first language. I'd go with something like Python, that way you don't have to over complicate teaching them about types, pointers (etc). Python is also extremely versatile (used for web, tools, scripting, games).

"A general computer science 101 module" sounds pretty broad, you'd probably want to narrow the scope more, like what does general mean to you? To me it means teaching people binary, hex, bytes, operators (AND, NAND, etc), etc. But that's probably beyond a 12 course if you want to include the other things. Other then that, seems pretty good too me.

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[David Murphy]

" that way you don't have to over complicate teaching them about types, pointers "

java doesn't have pointers

and as for types other than "Object" it only has the basic 8 primitive data types, all of which python also has.

 

python is perfectly good for a first language but it should be noted that everything you say of python :

"that way you don't have to over complicate teaching them about types, pointers (etc). Python is also extremely versatile (used for web, tools, scripting, games)."

is also true of java and most other reasonably high level languages.

[Will Knott]

For a little while Scratch was being talked about (its a great way to
start primary school kids, but not second level)

Paul - some forward motion
Hopefully. I think everyone thrown in there wanted to stick with it
and stay in contact.
I only learned about the schools F1 contest (Final Thursday) which
would be brilliant for a Dojo or two.

So there is commitment to keep plugging. However one of the teachers
pointed out that their schedules for next year is being submitted next
week. Time may be ticked past for 2013.

Stephen - sceptical

Don't be a septic, be someone who causes a ruckus.

Shane - HTML isn't a programming language (nor is CSS)
I'll argue that you don't need bytes but... HTML is needed.
Its a framework for other things. Outputting in HTML means that you
need to know HTML.

David - Objects and pointers...

Oddly I'd suggest the theory of objects before using them. Not sure if
its right for junior secondary cycle.

When I find out how to officially join I'll put the details in Nexus
and TOG and ask you to pass it on to the interested overlapping lists.

take care,
Will

>>> cesi-list+...@googlegroups.com

[David Murphy]

I wouldn't worry too much about objects and such for an intro course.

they're nice if you have time to let them get their heads around objects which can contain themselves (really just references to themselves of course.) most people can follow the general idea very easily and unless they've been trained to think in different terms first objects are a very natural way of thinking through problems.

I wouldn't worry too much about your choice of language either.

pointers... I wouldn't torture beginners with.

If it's teacher oriented perhaps go through some good beginners projects, perhaps something they can teach their pupils to play with like pygame(python) or robocode(java).

[Shane Marks]

@Will: I didn't mean to imply it wasn't important, just pointing out for clarification that it's not a programming language.