[Linux-aus] High school computing texts

[Andrew Donnellan]

Fwd to ALLIES as it's better there.

On 3/19/07, Glen Turner <glen.turner at aarnet.edu.au> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Gave a chat at a high school the other morning. Had a look
> at the textbook whilst I was there and it was absolutely dire.
>
> Dumbed down, unclear and wrong, with a bizarre choice of topics.

Which state?

I'm currently enrolled for NSW HSC Software Design and Development - IMHO it's:
* mostly irrelevant nowadays
    - a lot of the low level stuff like dreaded binary arithmetic is
more maths than software dev
* the textbooks (at least the ones that my DE centre uses) are
ANCIENT, not to mention completely wrong on some points (some
'important' points like basic copyright law)
    - ancient meaning 'modern PCs can even have more than 1GB of storage! wow!'
    - wrong meaning 'Public domain means that the software is still copyrighted'
        - then saying 'software developers must ensure accuracy in
their software'
* you'd learn more about software development by doing the Year 9/10
Information and Software Technology course than the HSC courses.

I'm not sure about teachers wanting it, but I certainly do.

-- 
Andrew Donnellan
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