Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[giraffe]

Well it's the mum who is uncontactable, and I don't have an email address for the rest of them.


Following all the advice from you lot, (just so I have someone to blame ) I have gone for the big bag, and I just hope she likes it. I was assuming she was going to run it up the flagpole every time she catches the ferry to England.

[clvrlad]

right just wondering who out of the clever s*ds in here have been looking at Raspberry Pi?

to me it looks a little complicated for a first time set up without school support

but it does looks interesting

[giraffe]

Huh?

[LAT]

very cheap computers - aimed particularly at getting kids into basic computer science.

[giraffe]

I looked at the wiki page, but it seemed to be written in computerese.

[LAT]

yes, I stopped after the first couple of sentences.

[MBH]

I read it and wondered if I'd drifted into a time-slip with all the BBC technology references Totally out of touch with what goes on in school 'computer' classes now, and when I tried to find out from Kingsley all I gained was the knowledge that her ICT teacher somehow makes it boring

[giraffe]

K's school got them to take a diploma in digital applications in year 9 and then they could drop it. We were told it was equivalent to a GCSE, but instead of grades they got pass, merit, distinction. It seemed to involve making pretty leaflets about tigers, which didn't seem to be proper computing at all to me.

[clvrlad]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/sample-page

the official site with less jargon
its the size of a credit card and can plug it into your tv

you do need a keyboard+mouse

cost wise about $15-35 depending which version you opt for

a cheap computer to experiment with things... wouldn't exactly mind it going up in smoke

[Scurra]

The issue with ICT in schools today is that they aren't really teaching ICT at all. The Raspberry Pi is, like the BBC micro before it, an attempt to get schoolchildren to interact with technology at a level beyond just running a program. Whilst I think that knowing how to use specific types of software is actually important enough to rank alongside learning how to add up and spell correctly, there is little opportunity today for children to learn about writing software or how computers actually work, even though the fundamentals of that haven't changed in forty years.

[Bunnylump]

ICT courses in schools are the most MIND NUMBING experience I have ever had. A total waste of time IMHO. If they actually taught the students to do something USEFUL they would be very worthwhile. But they don't, they are just stupid and pointless and have little or no application in real life.

[MBH]

Totally stunned but can't reply properly on this phone touch screen keypad. Back later.

[chazzie]

OK - so ICT stands for ??? Information Carp Technology??? I'm used to IT - aka Its Tough ..... Sorry joke from an IT manager years ago ..... But how did the C in the middle creep in??? And what does it mean?

[Scurra]

Yes, well I think that's where the problem started. The "C" stands for "Communication" and it's that bit which gradually supplanted the "Technology" bit. And whilst (as I said) I don't have any issues with the principle of learning how different sorts of applications work, and there is certainly a good case for exploring issues relating to the implications of social networking etc, that's a different thing from understanding the underlying principles that drive the technology in the first place. Now it could be argued that this isn't really needed to be taught in schools, but that's an argument that could be applied to almost anything beyond reading and writing!

Oh dear. I seem to have gone a bit political. Sorry.

[Bunnylump]

Idiotic Compulsory Torture I think.

Well, OK, it's Information and Communications Technology (I think), although I have just checked the school website and apparently it's gone back to IT.

Sorry, didn't see your post, Scurra.

[chazzie]

Fantastic - hopefully in a couple of years it will revert to CS - Computer Studies - and I will feel young again!!!!

[Bunnylump]

Think yourself lucky. I had to use SLIDE RULES and LOG BOOKS.

[giraffe]

I was the first year not to have a slide rule. My sister was in the year above and she had one. I remember my father writing to the school and asking why he should buy a slide rule when calculators were clearly the coming thing. They wrote back and said that slide rules were there to stay, but the following year we had calculators. We still used log books though because calculators weren't allowed in Chemistry exams.

[SparkOut]

Making pretty leaflets about tigers is *exactly* what computers are for. As well as being *exactly* for adding up columns of figures. As well as being *exactly* for recording river pollution sample results.

Almost nobody* needs or wants to deal with computers on a bit and byte level.
*relative to the general population

Almost everybody needs or wants to deal with computers to "do stuff".

[giraffe]

What they need to teach you is how to understand the salesman when he says " How many Megabytes of RAM (or ROM or whatever) do you want?" I don't understand all those numbers they quote at you when you try to buy a machine. I know what RAM is and ROM, but how on earth should I know how much I need or what speed it needs to be. I learnt to write programs in basic at school. I can work out for myself how to make a pretty leaflet.