On 25 January 2016 at 13:34, Stephen Loosley <stephenloos...@outlook.com> wrote: > > > Seems like Heston complaining about Food Science / Home Eco being taught > in schools > because students may misunderstand the tools, language or recipes and make > mistakes. > And, what would Shorten know about teaching Info Tech? Some seem to be > sucked in by > politician-simple-speak. Make no mistake the people who design your > "coding" national > syllabus will be just as IT-aware as you and us. They will encourage an IT > empowerment > by kids creating functioning, and real, IT sugar-scoops. Not simply using > IT, controlling IT. > That's what schools are about .. empowering students, including regards > info technology.
I can't imagine Heston complaining about practical scientific experimentation by anyone. It is what inspires him.? It would be great if IT and coding in schools could take a Heston approach? Alan Kay is always challenging https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc I found it via GopherCon 2015: Katherine Cox Buday - Simplicity and Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6mEo_FHZ5Y Which raises some interesting thoughts about how languages and code communities grow. The challenge with learning computing in a forward looking way is that it largely comes to us as a set of existing and inert tools with a shelflife. In uni I learned how to use a typesetter at the time when computers were making them obsolete. I have never seen one since. It would be good if the kind of learning was able to unpack, question and think beyond the tools at hand? This is why the art, science, computing, economics, society intersections would be nice to look at? Making board games to challenge or model a real life problem and then trying that in hardware and code could be an interesting journey? But experiencing that you yourself can make things, even a sugar scoop or bread board is also a win for a society where design with manufacturing is not for the most part, an observable part of the local economy. If we would like it to be in order to have local generation and development of innovation then we need to be able to have support, room, tools, time, legal space, and confidence to have a go and see things through to manufacture? TAFE had a lot of this but needs to reclaim the space and functionality? Janet _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link