Post by Tina EagerOn Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:18:39 UTC, "Samsonknight"
Post by SamsonknightPost by Tina EagerPost by Tina EagerCertainly the case in our school. It is predominantly the less able
who
Post by SamsonknightPost by Tina Eagertake it or people who are looking for a fourth choice A level and who
intend to drop it after AS. We use the ALIS stuff for grade predictions
and it seems to work OK. Even the more able students do less well at ICT
than other subjects.
Great! I just got an A-level grade out of it and now it feels like such a
waste.
How so? You just got an A in a subject which is recognised as difficult.
How is that a waste?
I got an A at GCSE and was using my A2 ICT coursework as an example of where
I got an 'A' by not following the teachers guide - hence highlighting the
problem with the teaching at the time. Overall I got a C at A-level - the
majority on my A2 set got Ds/Es. The aspect of the course I found difficult
were the actual examinations not the coursework, what I and many others
could never really understand is even though after revising the text , we
would get C's in the exam - we just didnt get why it was so hard to obtain
marks , even though we knew the *stuff*. I guess its probably because we
were not concise enough with out answers.
Post by Tina EagerPost by SamsonknightI really hope my UCAS applications for computer science this year
will not be majorly affected as a result of me doing it. Most students that
I know that did it , did not do it because they thought it was "easy", as a
matter of fact most of the ones that wanted "easy alevels" chose Media , art
and general studies. Also, I will have to disagree with the fact that ICT is
a subject taken by "less able 6th formers", we had all sorts of people in
our class at A2 - ranging from those studying the hard sciences to those who
were not. TBH most people that were doing ICT , initially chose it because
they thought it may help them if they studied a business related degree or
like myself go onto do computer science.
In our school it is the less able or the desparate who take it. The kids
who think it's just like GCSE and so they won't have to work hard or
even at all. Couldn't be more wrong of course, but that's one of the
preconceptions people have of ICT.
Post by SamsonknightPost by Tina EagerPost by Tina EagerNow, the sort of skills which A-level Maths develops and tests are
essential for degree level Computer Science. There does seem to be a
correlation between them and skills in coding.
Algebra maybe but in my experience that's not a given. But if you do D1
and D2 in Maths they are covered in A level Computing, to almost as
great a depth but as only a minor part of the syllabus.
Post by SamsonknightHowever, I would have
Post by Tina EagerPost by Tina Eagerthought the skills in abstraction and general use of logic and rules
are of value in many other areas of what industry calls "IT". If
someone is lacking in these skills, are they going to be much good in
analysing business needs and developing complex systems?
Possibly they are but if you can't express them except in some arcane
notation that nobody else "gets" what's the point? It's not just Maths
that gives those skills.
Post by SamsonknightPost by Tina EagerWell sorry, but I don't actually agree with you about the maths. Not
everybodywhodoes degree level Computer Science needs A level maths.
Purely personal experience of course but I did my CS on the basis of
CSE maths. I have no further experience of formal maths than that.
Still doing OK in CS though. A lot of the logic stuff I got through
Philosophy and the maths I picked up as I went along. It can be done. I
just refuse to believe I'm that unusual - I can't be the only one
surely?
After doing Alevel maths now I feel that it is very vital to do it, lets say
for example you go into games programming after your degree, wouldn't the
concepts surrounding trigonometry,differentiation and integration be handy?
Also I find that whilst doing alevel maths , your mind tends to be forced
into thinking much more logically - isn't that what programming about?
If that was all it was about then maybe maths would be useful. But what
programming is really about is meeting the needs of the user - reliably,
efficiently, quickly and in a way that is easy to maintain and update.
Not all users are games players.
As I understand it the Maths required for doing stuff like advanced
graphics required for games programming isn't in the A level syllabus
anyway and is taught at university as part of an advanced graphic
programming unit. Given the modularity of maths courses I'd expect that
to become the case for different sorts of maths as well. There's no
guarantee that Student X with an A grade in maths has covered anything
like the same syllabus as student Q who also has an A grade but on the
basis of taking different modules.
Some of the best programmers (as opposed to hackers) are linguists and
philosophers. They get the logic and they understand the structure of
languages, even the artificial ones of computing. Of the students I had
doing A2 Computing last year (as a typical example). The top 3 (A, A and
B grades) didn't actually do Maths A level. The guys who did do maths
were in there with Cs. FWIW one of the A grade guys actually did produce
a mod for a game as his project - without the benefit of maths, but he
did do Philosophy. He's doing Computer Science at a "top 10" university
this year.
Post by SamsonknightWe understood why to use databases , or creating systems in
spreadsheets.
Post by Tina EagerPost by SamsonknightBut what did annoy students like myself that did ICT through *good
intentions* is that much of the course content was just so irrelevent, and
by the time most of us realised this - it was far too late to drop it.
Irrelevant to/for what? Trust you were one of the students who "got"
normalisation to 3NF without any problems?
I am guilty with normalization - yes I had problems with that at first.But
what I was referring to was the theory side of things. I found it very vague
and recycled and for the degree I want to do - not very relevent. Natrually,
I am into the more practical side of computers and so if we were to learn
about software, networks etc I would prefer to learn about how they come to
be, instead of just learning some text from a book like a parrot without any
real understanding. I feel that being much more practical with computers is
far more of an asset then learning to the theory as it can be applied to the
office environment.
I should have done A - Level Computing, but unfortunantly my School didnt
offer it , and at the time I thought ICT would be a better alternative.
Post by Tina EagerPost by SamsonknightThe
AS course was irrelevent because from doing it, it was just simply going
over the same stuff in GCSE ICT - legal system, different types of
software,networks etc - which I found totally irrelevent as I did it at GCSE
and got an A in it. Naturally , we all thought it would have got better in
A2, like most other subjects do, but no it didn't, ICT 4 was just like ICT 2
(just a bit more added on to it)- and instead of learning new things , it
felt so repetitive. As for ICT 5 , well I guess that was a good unit, the
rest were repetitive , and what makes it worse is that throughout the whole
course is the *harshness* in giving marks. In addition to that , the
Analysis > Design > implementation > user guide > evaluation.
Harshness as in? You mean you actually had to work at getting marks?
This is where many of our less able and less well motivated students
come unstuck. The unmotivated "I have to do another A level so I'll do
ICT because it's easy" student doesn't make the effort and the less able
student has difficulty grasping some of the concepts and content.
Post by SamsonknightThis brings me to the following conclusion - "Is ICT a easy subject?" = "No"
, Why? because simply due to the difficulty in obtaining marks in it, which
means that it requires you to work relatively hard to get marks. Hence the
less able students will end up with Ds or Es at the end.
The really less able students will be "encouraged" to drop out at AS and
not cash in their U grade. The less able but well motivated students
will make it through. The key is motivation and ability I think.
I agree, I remembered times when I just lost all motivation for doing the
course because it got to a point where I found the course extremely
longwinded and the teaching poor. This is the reason why I feel that a good
teacher is absolutely vital for ICT if students were to pass - to make it
much more interesting and keep students motivated. My frustration in wanting
the course to be much more practical (because as a student I wanted to learn
about programming, hardware, how networks are assembled etc) led to low
morale and hence my final grade. By the last unit, I didnt take it
seriously. I enjoyed doing the coursework as it allowed me to be creative by
letting me program a bit in VBA and scored high grades BA, but that was
about it.
Post by Tina EagerPost by SamsonknightI regret taking it , and in future I think that ICT should just be an
applied subject to those doing business studies, like statistics or
mechanics is to maths. That way, the irrelevent bits of the course would be
snipped out and students like myself will not be discriminated against for
doing a 'mickey mouse' subject. Also it will save us a lot of time by
allowing us to presue our other interests at A-level - in my case
politics/history or Art.
But you haven't said what it is you think is irrelevant and why. A
course as broadly based as ICT can't please all the people all the time
and probably won't please any of the people all the time but that
doesn't make it irrelevant in and of itself.
Those doing business studies - I believe ICT at this level is useful which
is why I think it should in future be an applied unit. However. for students
like myself I feel that much of it is very irrelevent, fair enough you learn
about the systems life cycle (which I guess is relevent) - but you learn
about that prior to your AS project and even at GCSE - at A2 its just
basically recycling that stuff and reusing it - therefore nothing new. My
interest in the subject dropped as a result, as I wanted to expand my
knowledge...Also , for someone like myself, as I mentioned briefly int his
thread I would prefer ICT to be much more practical, that way students will
know how to implemented what they have learnt in theory, because at the
moment students just learn the textbook like parrots and stick it in the
exam paper.So tell me, how is this a true test of someones ability in the
subject? Because I am 100% sure that many students have forgotten the theory
by now as all it was when they were doing ICT copy and paste...