[LINK] New Core Body Of Knowledge for the ICT Profession

[Janet Hawtin]

On 7/1/07, steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> wrote:

> The mid-term outcome of the the CBOK should be normal managers, CIO's
> and CEO's saying: "We will *only* hire CBOK accredited IT staff".

Yes it would be nice to see proposals around quality in IT which did
not need to separate people into 'in' and 'out'. Paying insurance in
order to polarise a community of practice seems to be a method for
generating value elsewhere and not a method which would reduce risk
and increase capacity long term.

That approach has value for the people who are in but is more about or
oriented around a judgement and an ability to pay for accreditation.
If the Australian IT industry thinks this way it will be less likely
for IT folk who see a person who is making an error to have a
conversation around improving the task. The value is oriented around
the difference and not around the collective value of us all making
good choices in a technology community.

It would be good to focus more on social literacies of negotiated
conversation in a community or workplace context which are committed
to the client's best interests or an overal public interest.

This means we are investing in processes and conversations which
reduce the social or economic overhead of a population of people who
are making mistakes.
It also helps us to be more nimble at finding new ways to do things
when the conversation reveals that a 'mistake' might actually be a new
way of doing things well. The knowledge is not static, it is
discursive, and barriers which obfuscate that dialogue are a cost and
not a benefit.

Australia does have a good innovative and discursive community how do
we make the most of that?

Alan Noble from Google spoke to me some months ago about organising an
event which encourages open code in schools, technologies that kids
can unpack,  investigate and develop the beginnings of interest in IT.
And to think about how to encourage women in this sector.

I started by talking to teachers who were interested in technology.
We have been looking at Squeak which gives a gui starting point and
has late binding so that you can make something and tweak variables
while it runs and responds. Nice quick feedback loop for learning.

Peter Ruwoldt at Grant High School Mt Gambier suggested the school
camp at Robe. So we are thinking about a camp there in the school
holidays around March 2008.
http://web.granths.sa.edu.au/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=72

At the same time I have been reading a blog by Artichoke in NZ
http://artichoke.typepad.com/artichoke/2007/06/unwarranted_ass.html
and talking to folks about the challenge of trying to look at IT in
education without the specific tool leading the conversation.

So I am thinking now that it might be good to do a camp where the
theme is Water, and people can bring their work in progress which is
some kind of open code project around the idea of water, a story, a
model of flow, anything which relates to water. I am hoping this will
provide an opportunity for people to look at the different approaches
people take to the problem and will also make it possible to produce a
CD which can be distributed to schools with open code examples and
resources for looking at water as a topic. A resource which the people
who weren't at the camp can still use to start a new exploration of
the same ideas.

Early days but perhaps this kind of event might be useful in other contexts.
What kinds of events encourage people to interact with other ways of
doing things.
What kind of research and inquiry is possible? Perhaps a uni age code
festival around the theme of Solar, or community peer2peer networking?
These are the problems of our community how can we find new answers
and approaches and conversations?

Janet