[ubuntu-uk] (Marketing) Royal Society asks you - why IT is boring?

[Matthew Daubney]

On Thu, 2010-08-26 at 07:10 +0100, alan c wrote:
> or nearly that, anyway.....
> 
> Article:
> Royal Society opens inquiry into why kids hate tech
> Lessons that is, not games, mobiles, Facebook:
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/25/royal_society_schools_computing/
> 
> 'exam results have shown computing subjects are failing to grab kids' 
> attention'
> 
> Could it be that a strong bias towards proprietary products is not 
> inspiring students?
> Would more appreciation of Free Software in education enable better 
> use of talents?
> 
> Express your views to the Royal Society soon.
> http://royalsociety.org/Education-Policy/Projects/
> 
> -- 
> alan cocks
> Ubuntu user
> 

My experience of GCSE IT was that it was "This is Microsoft Word, write
a 2 page document including a table, a graphic and a footnote." which is
_not_ what IT should be about. I lost _huge_ amounts of marks in one
part because the project was "Create 4 linked webpages in Microsoft
Front Page blah blah blah" which would have been a nightmare for any
sane person to maintain, so I wrote it in PHP with a SQL backend and
none of the markers understood it :(

IT should be more about computers less about office work!

-Matt Daubney