Two interesting articles

Two interesting articles for you to readm, or at least skim through:

1. This article is some research of the numbers of students taking qualifications in KS4 and KS5 in ICT  from 2007-2009.
2. This article gives yet more reasons why business needs us to teach ICT (and Computing) in schools!

Hope your week is going well!

Sue

Review of National Curriculum

Thought the comments interesting on ICT, wonder what the future holds for ICT teachers.  Just as well we are adaptable, I agree with the Acorn guy, it really is very boring for those who can write their own apps and have them Number One of the download chart at 14 years old.

Review of National Curriculum

"On 20 January 2011 the Secretary of State for Education announced a review of the National Curriculum in England. This section contains information about the review. The review will look at the National Curriculum for both primary and secondary schools.
The Department wants to hear from as many people as possible as part of the review. A Call for Evidence has been launched."

Read more about these developments here.

The Best of BETT

Hopefully you all really enjoyed BETT on Friday. What interesting products/resources did you come across? I was very interested in the Active Robot stand and the potential for engaging students by teaching them to control robots – there were a lot of different robots which were not too expensive, and could be used at different levels. I also was impressed by a small stand for YouSrc.com, a programming language for children that can be used to quickly develop games on an Android phone as well as in a web browser.

Games in the ICT national curriculum

Andrew Hague writes on the Computing At School Google Group ( http://groups.google.com/group/computing-at-school/msg/66d3a8b81a665750)

 For those that might have missed these today:

"Sony UK boss Ray Maguire has urged the government, educators and the
private sector to adopt games into the national curriculum "relatively
quickly."

"The time is right now to do it," he told the audience at the Learning
Without Frontiers conference in London today. "

        http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-01-11-sony-the-time-is-now...

"Elite creator David Braben has strongly criticised the current
digital national curriculum in the UK.
Referring to his own self-taught programming skills on Acorn Electrons
and BBC Micros, he worried that today "the equivalent kid to me would
probably hate ICT and therefore probably be put off computers for
good." "

        http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-01-11-braben-every-kid-i-t...

Any comments? What do you think?  Sue