[LINK] Education system doesn't support NBN

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

If people are concerned about the 'dumbing down' of ICT skills may one 
suggest you make your thoughts known to ACARA. These folk are creating
our new Australian school national curriculum. 

Of course from personal experience your voice will certainly be ignored.

ACARA does NOT regard ICT skills as a 'core' learning area. So, soon in 
every Australian school, *using* ICT (not studying ICT) will become the
whole focus of school ICT education, using all their expensive machines.

That is, ICT is simply another 'general capability' across all subjects
without any requirement for children study ICT. Simply taught to use it.

If you send your objections to this now, in a few years, when we depend
on other countries, you can say I told you so. I hope it's not too late.

One example? Go to <http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au> and, search
on ICT. Most of the very few ICT references are for verifying resources
in the History syllabus. This should turn out many competent programers.

Now, it's obvious ACARA will not re-consider this situation. One slight
satisfaction is that ACARA will be vilified for this in decades to come,
when, of course, all the 40 year old ACARA curriculum-experts whom have
never personally studied ICT, in any manner what-so-ever, have departed.

Bernard forwards ..

Education system doesn't support NBN: Caelli

Karen Dearne  Australian IT  May 17, 2011
<http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/education-system-doesnt-
support-nbn-caelli/story-e6frgakx-1226057628313> (snipped)

AUSTRALIA is not equipped to deal with the National Broadband Network 
due to past "dumbing down" of IT education and resulting lack of trained 
professionals, security expert Bill Caelli warns.

"There is a crisis in network education that needs to be addressed now," 
he told an Australian Computer Society session at the AusCERT conference 
on the Gold Coast.

"The security of the nation depends on network security because today, 
everything is networked.

"The federal and state governments have got to recognise that this is a 
crisis," the Queensland University of Technology IT security expert said.

Professor Caelli said the criticality of the situation was demonstrated 
by the OECD, which two years ago reported that more than 50 per cent of 
the GDP of modern western countries was dependent on networked IT systems.

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Cheers people,
Stephen Loosley