ve4cib
October 11th, 2009, 06:12 AM
My sister was over for dinner tonight, and the conversation went into the topic of encouraging school children to have a certain level of technological literacy. (My sister is a teacher, and recently went to a seminar/conference/thingy where this subject came up.)
Now, it seems obvious to me that students need some kind of tech-savvy to get along in today's world. We're an increasingly digital society, so if you don't know the basics when it comes to using a computer you're pretty much sunk insofar as getting a good job goes. (Yes, there are lots of good jobs out there for non computer-users -- welders, plumbers electricians, carpenters, and other trades-workers all come to mind -- but let's leave those aside for the time being.)
My personal thoughts on promoting computer literacy is to make an introductory programming course mandatory for all students. That's right: force every single student to write Hello World, some basic control-flow (if statements and loops), variables, and some basic error-handling and input validation. Maybe even get into some standard algorithms like binary searches and bubble-sorts.
The point is that, despite the fact that we rely very, very heavily on computers, most of us actually have virtually no idea how they work beyond the very basics. If we expect people to be computer-literate I can't think of any better way to accomplish this than by teaching them how software works at a fundamental level. We teach people grammar and spelling to make them language-literate. We teach them number theory and arithmetic to make them numerate. So why not teach them programming to make them computer-literate?
In grade 11 when I took my first computer science class (learning VB6 of all things) it was an incredible eye-opener for me. All of a sudden when a program I would use at home didn't work I actually had some sort of idea what happened. "Oh, they didn't check for non-negative numbers in the input" or "I bet they didn't check that the number I entered wasn't zero before they divided." Suddenly rather than just swearing at my computer for not working properly I had an educated-guess as to what the problem was, and knowing that I could work around the quirks of these pieces of software.
Now, I freely admit that I am not a teacher, nor do I have children going to school. So I'd love to hear from those of you out there who either work as teachers, or who have children in school. Do you think that teaching them basic programming would help make them computer-literate? Or do you have any other ideas to promote "technological literacy" in school?
Now, it seems obvious to me that students need some kind of tech-savvy to get along in today's world. We're an increasingly digital society, so if you don't know the basics when it comes to using a computer you're pretty much sunk insofar as getting a good job goes. (Yes, there are lots of good jobs out there for non computer-users -- welders, plumbers electricians, carpenters, and other trades-workers all come to mind -- but let's leave those aside for the time being.)
My personal thoughts on promoting computer literacy is to make an introductory programming course mandatory for all students. That's right: force every single student to write Hello World, some basic control-flow (if statements and loops), variables, and some basic error-handling and input validation. Maybe even get into some standard algorithms like binary searches and bubble-sorts.
The point is that, despite the fact that we rely very, very heavily on computers, most of us actually have virtually no idea how they work beyond the very basics. If we expect people to be computer-literate I can't think of any better way to accomplish this than by teaching them how software works at a fundamental level. We teach people grammar and spelling to make them language-literate. We teach them number theory and arithmetic to make them numerate. So why not teach them programming to make them computer-literate?
In grade 11 when I took my first computer science class (learning VB6 of all things) it was an incredible eye-opener for me. All of a sudden when a program I would use at home didn't work I actually had some sort of idea what happened. "Oh, they didn't check for non-negative numbers in the input" or "I bet they didn't check that the number I entered wasn't zero before they divided." Suddenly rather than just swearing at my computer for not working properly I had an educated-guess as to what the problem was, and knowing that I could work around the quirks of these pieces of software.
Now, I freely admit that I am not a teacher, nor do I have children going to school. So I'd love to hear from those of you out there who either work as teachers, or who have children in school. Do you think that teaching them basic programming would help make them computer-literate? Or do you have any other ideas to promote "technological literacy" in school?