Children learning Computing
Just read an interesting article on BBC News pointing out that in the UK less and less children are learning how to programme computers and more and more children though are learning to be end users, I slightly disagree from what i have seen in all honesty. When I twas a child i hadn’t even heard of such things like computer code etc. I had no idea at all with the exception of what a word processor was maybe.
Today children seem a LOT more educated in subjects related to computing, even if these subjects are not in detail, the concept of what a computer does and there importance is a message well received.
News article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7324556.stm
Yeah, from what I have seen it doesn’t seem to be on the decrease. Having said that I haven’t been watching it for the past few decades as some people have and SoC admissions are going down. Such a trend can only benefit ourselves though.
The issue is that in previous years, increasing to when computers developed there cult appeal. Children would learn about them by coding and creating there own software to achieve things they couldn’t normally do with bought software, either because it was restricted, they couldn’t afford it or it didn’t exist.
Many of these children have become the pioneers of computing.
In more recent years however though children as a whole have become far more skilled and educated in computing, many of these children are still far behind earlier generations who could, and often would build there own software or reverse engineer software or even build there own computer and operating system from electronic components, this was all before building a computer became a trivial task.
Within IT, children are spoon fed far too much and are lead even more, using products such as Microsoft Windows almost exclusively and learning to develop software with with graphical end user tools such as VB has actually decreased what they would have otherwise learned about computing without such readily available tools.
Give a child a computer with Windows and he’ll learn how to click buttons and to use Windows, and other MS software… give a child a computer with UNIX or Linux and he’ll learn computing :p
I agree with Lynn.
I think more kids are *using* computers, but less kids are writing software in their own time. This needs to be addressed if IT is to move forward. Our generation are not going to live forever!