(In case you hadn’t guessed, this article is about a transcript I was sent, not a book!)

readingAs the heading above may suggest, I have not yet finished reading and making notes on the transcript of this conference, which was kindly sent to me by the organisers.

A few things strike me though.

Firstly, the organisation clearly uses an automated speech-to-text application, which nobody checks. Thus as well as the occasional spelling error we are treated to all the verbal tics that speakers have. I'm not complaining, merely pointing out that no matter how good the software you use for speech-to-text, it isn't enough to obviate the need for a human being to proofread it and tidy it up. At least, not yet.

It seems to me that a transcript full of verbal tics is fine because all the reader wants is to get the gist of what people are saying without having to do too much deciphering and interpreting. But if you are thinking of preparing a bid for money, a report on computing in your school, or an article for a newsletter, I would humbly suggest that you do not completely rely on an algorithm.

Turning to the contents of the report, I've picked up on two things so far. The first is the depressingly long-standing question of making Computing interesting for girls. Drawing on the recent Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) report on Computing in schools, it was acknowledged that one of the things thrown out with the old ICT Programme of Study was the attractiveness of the subject to girls. 

There's nothing new in this. Many people predicted it even before the new Programme of Study came into force. I wrote about it in It Wasn’t Me Wot Done It, Sir! The Depressing State Of Computing As A Subject

A possible solution, and one that I have not only favoured but found to work in the past, is to devise a problem-based approach, where the problems are (a) interesting, and (b) lend themselves to collaborative effort. The subject is still seen as geeky and something that only boys are likely to find interesting. This is quite a challenge, because in my opinion the Programme of Study itself is intrinsically geeky and, frankly, boring unless you're in the right frame of mind. I've always thought that ICT or something like it should have been retained, rather than forcing students to choose Computing or something else entirely. Oh, and just for the record, I'm as geeky as the next person. I spent a few hours this morning messing about with command line instructions, and in my youth a girl friend (ie a friend who was a girl) and I stayed up till 2am figuring out DOS commands. 

Anyway, the second problem that was discussed is what to do about the fact that when students enter secondary school some of them can't even use a keyboard. Well, the way I dealt with this issue was as follows:

I sent an email to my counterparts in all of the local feeder primary schools outlining what we would be covering in the first term of the first year, along with the skills I expected the students to have when they arrived. In case that gave some people the fright of their lives, I also offered to run 'catch-up' classes for those primary school pupils who were going to be joining my school (with their teacher in attendance, of course). That worked very well.

With a bit of luck, if the current heatwave has not completely fried my brains, I'll have more to say about this conference after the summer break.

In the meantime, you may wish to read Miles Berry's views [Warning: this links to a non-secure site] on the current state of Computing education and what might be done to rescue it. I do not disagree with his suggestion.