Digital learning and specialist digital schools

[Aaron]

Hi everyone,

We often hear that technology is everything, and with the federal government and opposition both crying 'innovation' and 'coding', I thought it'd be a good idea to bring up this topic of digital learning. As a pre service teacher, I currently am quite dissapointed with the lack of interest/availability of information technology/computing based subjects in schools.

The following video (https://vimeo.com/21043303) showcases a specialist digital school (the video is quite old, about 5 years old), which I thought was really cool. We currently have specialist science schools, but what about specialist digital/technology schools?

I guess my objective for this thread is to start a discussion about a) the video and if there is a place for such a school/curriculum in Victoria, and b) what you think/why you think there is a lack of interest in IT/computing subjects, given its emerging importance in life.

All comments and opinions welcome, regardless of your current education status (university, year 12, even earlier). 

Edited: fixed link

[MJRomeo81]

The overall goal of educating students is to have informed citizens. Learning about algorithms and data structures in school isn't about gaining employability in the IT industry. You don't study physical education in high school to become a professional athlete or visual arts to become a singer/songwriter. As with other STEM classes and English/language, the aim is to provide students with a solid foundation for the years to come.

With that being said, it's important to note that schools should be teaching problem solving, not teaching how to code. The real skills in the domain come from solving problems using a scientific approach. The code is just the implementation, and often the easy part. Teaching a bunch of syntax just to move an object around on the screen is pretty pointless.

An understanding of how to write software will teach skills around how to approach complex problems (decomposition, logical thinking, planning, separation of responsibilities, etc), how to troubleshoot systems (not just IT systems but other workflows), how to identify opportunities for optimisation and automation, and so on.

For many Australian schools, touch typing and MS-Office skills is the full extent of an IT education.