Hi Daniel,
What skills do we want them to have? What basic concepts are required for our students to have? Pixel? Byte? Pits and Lands? MIME? Character Encoding? Unicode? Filesystem. Read-only, etc.What skills? 'Can point and click'? 'Can create a powerpoint presentation'? 'Can search using Google'? or 'Can create and manage files in a filesystem'? 'Understands file attributes'? 'Knows what a process is', etc.Hmm, I was with you Les right up to this point. Fast forward several decades and the kids may not even be typing or pointing/clicking, and certainly won't care about bits and bytes, but rather may be talking to the computer like Star Trek engineers. Here's an example of a software application where a physics prof demonstrates an MIT application for doing basic physics lab exercises on the computer using a smart whiteboard:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZNTgglPbUA
I guess the point I was trying to get across was that there are certain fundamental "thingy's" that all children should know in order to talk intelligently about technology, particularly computer tech. We should, amongst the other stuff, teach this basic vocabulary and the ideas behind it, IMO.
The students would only have to learn how to draw entities, circle them to move them, etc., in order to do physics experiments with mass, friction, springs, gravity, and so on. The "skills" required to use such an application are fairly minimal, rather the students get to see physics in action and change conditions of experiments as easily as they write on a whiteboard.
I guess if I were to specify a single "skill" that students should have for using a computer with specific software applications to accomplish something, I'd say it would be how to teach themselves how to use a new software application. So modifying your list above, here are the skills I think we should teach students and teachers:* How to find a tutorial on a particular software application, either from the Help tab or from the Web and go through it. * How to use Wikipedia, Google (or any search engine) to find example uses and example applications of a particular software package (remember how we learned how to use an encyclopedia to find information; I haven't used one of those in decades.) * How to locate user groups/online communities for a particular subject/application, and how to use online etiquette for joining group discussions. * How to find a new Open Source software application, install it, and apply the above techniques for learning it. * How to work in a team to do the above with each team member learning how to do a specific task in a software application in support of a project goal.Then, all we have to do it put working PCs with Internet connectivity in front of them and they're off :-)
Yes, but where?I've got lots of kids that are off in my class, and I usually yell at them! (grin)
Yes, the above set of ideas would be fine at the grade 11/12 level in most cases. How about Grade 8/9? A couple could, but most would flounder on some aspects of what you have above. (and it's good).
I'm just pointing out that there is _also_ a need for some fundamental goals with students that include some other understandings like some of those content ideas above.
No biggie. Thanks, Les
Daniel -- Daniel Howard President and CEO Georgia Open Source Education Foundation