Communications of the ACM
School Ict to Be Replaced By Computer Science Program
The shortage of qualified computer science teachers is one of the many concerns that will be addressed by Britain's revamped ICT curriculum.
Credit: Casper College
England education secretary Michael Gove announced that the current program of information and communications technology will be replaced next September by an open source curriculum in computer science and programming. Gove says the change is designed to enable schools to use curricula and teaching resources that properly equip students for the 21st century.
Resources developed by experts are already available online to help schools teach computer science, and universities and businesses should develop courses and exams for the new curricula, Gove says. "Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word or Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple [two-dimensional] computer animations," he says.
"The current lessons are essentially irrelevant to today's generation of children who can learn PowerPoint in a week," says computer games entrepreneur Ian Livingstone, who is an advisor to Gove. Some experts have expressed concerns about a shortage of qualified teachers. "There are, of course, significant challenges to overcome, specifically with the immediate shortage of computer science teachers," says the British Computing Society's Bill Mitchell.
From BBC News
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