ICT at GCSE

[Looking for help]

Does ICT need to be a GCSE... No. But the skills need to be taught.

I see this every single day in my job, and could not have put it better, thank you Dark Energy.

We use excel and access databases often in my job, and the thing is once you can see what they can do, you want to be able to use them to their full functionality(is that spelt correctly?). Without basic understanding, it is very difficult, and as you get older, well it just gets harder

[mike1880]

As I understand it, Computing is essentially computer programming. As such, it will be as relevant to future employment as learning riveting or boilermaking, both of which are so useful in our thriving shipbuilding industry. Wrong decade, wrong continent.

This surprises me. Aren't computer programmers needed any more? Why not? Who does all the programming now?

Programmers are needed just as much as ever (as are shipbuilders). But not here - it's largely done in India, increasingly in China and Eastern Europe.

Mike

[P's mum]

My daughter has to choose between ICT and another 'tech' subject, though I think that she only gets to do a 'short course' - whatever that is, because of her other GCSE choices. (I think that every child has to some type of 'art' and some 'tech' subject but because she want to do PE GCSE, instead of the minimum compulsory PE, she will have to fit these two options into one timetable slot and hence the short courses.)

I had not heard of 'half' GCSE before this forum, (though I think that her school may also offer history + geography both as short courses in the humanities option rather than having to choose between history and geography).

Does anyone know what she might be doing in this course? Are there 'half' GCSEs?

From what I have heard elsewhere it sounds as though most tech subjects involve a lot of 'evaluation' etc. rather than much 'doing'. Since she does not seem to be very fired up about any of these subjects I have suggested that she tries to choose something that she enjoys doing and is not too demanding in terms of course work (she will be doing three separate sciences and 2 MFL, one to A level, and all the usual other stuff at the same time).

I told her that she should not be worrying too much about anything being 'useful for getting a job' (she is only 13 and will still only be 15 when she takes this lot!) Does ICT and Art, which is where she seems to be inclining at present seem to be a reasonably sensible choice? From what Dark Energy says ICT sounds not too boring and reasonably useful - any views as to whether I'm correct?

[marigold]

Hi,

My daughter is in year 9 and at her school they all have to take a half GCSE in IT this summer.

So far it has involved quite a lot of course work, designing a data base or something ( may be something completely different, I tend to glaze over when such things are mentioned) but she has managed to do most of it in lessons with a few lunch time sessions and the odd Sunday and there will then be one exam in June. If your daughter is doing it over two years I do not think it will be too onerous at all especially compared to other tech subjects...see other threads about FT and DT course work which can result in a lot of last minute late night parental assistance.

[KB]

I think the short course GCSE in ICT is OK - much 'course work' required for the full GCSE.

Art GCSE has large amount of course work so need to be prepared to give up 'free' time for it to do well.

[2childmum]

My son (year will be starting modules from the Microsoft qualification next term. Apparently they can take 3 or 6 modules - equivalent to either 1 or 2 GCSEs in ICT but the best mark they can get is a B in each - which worries me a little with talk of unis asking for percentages of As and A* at GCSE. Has anyone any experience of this course? He can then go on to do computing at AS level in years 10 and 11, which we have been told would be taken into account instead of the GCSE grades. His teacher told us last week that unis are much more impressed with computing than with ICT. A brief look at some lists of A-levels accepted by unis partly bears this out - some will accept both, some only computing, and some neither.

[sj355]

ICT GCSE is surely even more of an irrelevance to the current generation, who are as likely to use a phone or an iPod or a games console for a large part of their ICT needs, as it was for those of us who've picked it up as we went along (some of us started with punched tape - but I just missed punched cards).

Mike

Hmm. Probably different schools do different ICTs. My son does the short course and he has chosen to use Dreamweaver for constructing an Arts web site. The reason for using Dreamweaver rather than say Frontpage (which they are not allowed to use) is of course obvious: the former is what professionals use, it is hard to learn and sometime clanky to use and does require an understanding of programming, whereas frontpage is essentially for novices that prefer to use something that looks like a word processor. (Of course in my opinion it is far better to also learn hypertext so you can go to the source page and twick things even further; but I have stayed out of my son's way and let him get on with it on his own). Other friends at his school chose different tasks to do and some for example use Excel and program using macros to do their work.

Sorry Mike, but ipod or phone is the outcome of the work and programming that goes on behind the scenes and it is the latter that they try to introduce the pupils to. This is I think valuable - if only they could cut down the time they dedicate in producing endless evaluation reports for every single step they perfom then it would have been an even more valuable GCSE.

[mike1880]

By that reasoning they should be using Notepad.

[sj355]

By that reasoning they should be using Notepad.

I have missed the reasoning I am afraid. Notepad is old, but still useful if one wishes to edit the hypertext (source) in a web page or change something in the programming of LaTex page (Latex is the programming language used for writing mathematical papers). If you tried to use word for doing any of this it would add its own programming language (which is of course invisible to the user) on top of your own program and mess what you wish to amend. So even clanky+ old has its uses sometimes!

In any case in my DS's school there was no choice as a short course in ICT was compulsory. Unfortunately some genious decided that a short GCSE in RS should also be compolsury and I am afraid it feels to me (and my DS) as Notepad feels to you