In 2014 the curriculum was finally updated.
I have been thinking about this over the last few days and there are so many implications and factors to consider...
Looking at the old curriculum, it was so out of date I feel its terribly unreal, considering the advancements that countries in other parts of that have made. We fail terribly when it come to making strives in technology for the generation and teaching them these things.
Although the new curriculum was most definitely needed, there are a number of factors that worry me.
There is a sense of being somewhat overwhelmed especially from the older generation of teacher, being that they don't have the subject knowledge to be able to teach this curriculum effectively.
I have considered that there is lack of training, I guess I speak this from 1st hand experience being in study myself. I would have expected that I would have learned and been introduced to new technologies and software that can and should be used in schools, but to my dismay this is not the case. not saying that I haven't learned anything, because that would be an outright lie.
This lack of knowledge and training is definitely a stumbling block when it comes to delivering this new curriculum.
Another thing that I picked up while at school is that some children although very literate in technology lack basic computing skills like saving correctly etc.
I guess this is something that can be easily taught, but its taking the time to do these things, without presuming that these children already know these things.
On the other side of the argument I am completely in agreement with this updated curriculum, I think that it was well overdue.
I was thinking about my upbringing and how fortunate I was to be brought up with a lot of computers around me. This was one of the influences that allowed me to be possible more computer literate that some of the friends that I have. considering this I looked at the generations that we are teaching, and all of the different types of technology that they have open and available to them. I dare say that my 9 year old brother in the not so far future will definitely be more computer fluent that I, and the fact is that most of the children around us will be, and the simple fact is that we have to get with the times and get on their level when come to teaching them ICT, because if we're not careful actually they will be teaching us in class instead of the other way round which is the way it's supposed to be.
So... what strides are we going to make?
what can we do to impact the next generation?
and how can we do it effectively?
The simple fact is we are teaching the next generation of modern technology.
You are not wrong here. Your point about children lacking digital skills such as saving is really pertinent. Today I taught a fairly complex lesson to a year five class. We were discussing conditional programming statements and they were all excellent at 'talking like a program', even surprising my by correcting their conditional statements when they got them the wrong way round. Then I asked them to save their work! I ended up having to go through it step by step so they didn't simply overwrite the file in the shared drive they were working on. Very frustrating. Hopefully the new curriculum, if implemented well in schools, will go a long way to correcting these shortfalls but for now it's step by step for me!
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