All schools nowadays have a dedicated computer science curiculum from the time, when kids can start spelling words. My kids go through exams, labs, assignments etc. on computer science. Having not had that kind of focus in my primay school education and working on IT for a living i wonder if that is the right thing to do.
First of all kids nowadays, know how to operate a computer and play games before they can attend any of these classes. My daughter definitely knew where the games that interested her were and how to get to them without anybody teaching her that. That's what having a few cousins of all age groups does, i guess. From there on, they figure out how stuff works. So really school classes is not the first thing where they get initiated into computers.
From what i have seen, schools use two primary tools to teach computers. One is a graphing software called Logo which is very popular for kids education and the other is Microsoft Office Products. Fundementals of computer science are not given that much importance to, because i guess they are not that cool. There are a very few schools that start with a programming language like python, but they are few and far between. The intentions here are good, as Logo allows kids to write scripts for graphing and is a good first step for programming languages. Microsoft products i think possibly provides them with the basic set of tools such as text editor (Word), Spreadsheet (Excel) etc. But things go wrong from there in my opinion.
Microsoft powerpoint is a tool that should be banned for kids. Powerpoint because of its nature encourages everbody to do bullet point lists and broken down sentences without any regard to grammar. Primary school kids should be encouraged to write in full sentences with a subject, predicate and everything, which is what powerpoint bullet list precisely doesn't allow you to do.
There is something about teaching prepackaged software early on for kids that is so wrong. Good thing about packaged software is they give results fast. I see my daughter gets excited when she can put an animation on powepoint and get it to work. But kids and even computer professionals for that matter who get exposed to fully developed packaged software early on are less likely to develop skills in basic IT such as putting together components to build software. Results are not that quick and often not so attractive, that turns them off.
One of the other things that's very common also is use of search tools to get information. It is not exactly new that, there are assignment help and answers available on the internet which makes kids school lives very easy. Once they know how to work google search, you will see them running upto the computer for any questions trivial to complex and get answers without having to think or work their way through. Dictionary, atlas, news paper, monthly magazines, General Knowledge books are hardly used, because Google search is a better way to find accurate information. Art of patiently looking at information and working with what you get are getting completely lost.
I have tried teaching my daughter a programming language with minimal success. I picked a language in which iam not an expert myself, and i can learn with her. Let's see how it goes !!!!
First of all kids nowadays, know how to operate a computer and play games before they can attend any of these classes. My daughter definitely knew where the games that interested her were and how to get to them without anybody teaching her that. That's what having a few cousins of all age groups does, i guess. From there on, they figure out how stuff works. So really school classes is not the first thing where they get initiated into computers.
From what i have seen, schools use two primary tools to teach computers. One is a graphing software called Logo which is very popular for kids education and the other is Microsoft Office Products. Fundementals of computer science are not given that much importance to, because i guess they are not that cool. There are a very few schools that start with a programming language like python, but they are few and far between. The intentions here are good, as Logo allows kids to write scripts for graphing and is a good first step for programming languages. Microsoft products i think possibly provides them with the basic set of tools such as text editor (Word), Spreadsheet (Excel) etc. But things go wrong from there in my opinion.
Microsoft powerpoint is a tool that should be banned for kids. Powerpoint because of its nature encourages everbody to do bullet point lists and broken down sentences without any regard to grammar. Primary school kids should be encouraged to write in full sentences with a subject, predicate and everything, which is what powerpoint bullet list precisely doesn't allow you to do.
There is something about teaching prepackaged software early on for kids that is so wrong. Good thing about packaged software is they give results fast. I see my daughter gets excited when she can put an animation on powepoint and get it to work. But kids and even computer professionals for that matter who get exposed to fully developed packaged software early on are less likely to develop skills in basic IT such as putting together components to build software. Results are not that quick and often not so attractive, that turns them off.
One of the other things that's very common also is use of search tools to get information. It is not exactly new that, there are assignment help and answers available on the internet which makes kids school lives very easy. Once they know how to work google search, you will see them running upto the computer for any questions trivial to complex and get answers without having to think or work their way through. Dictionary, atlas, news paper, monthly magazines, General Knowledge books are hardly used, because Google search is a better way to find accurate information. Art of patiently looking at information and working with what you get are getting completely lost.
I have tried teaching my daughter a programming language with minimal success. I picked a language in which iam not an expert myself, and i can learn with her. Let's see how it goes !!!!
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