Why are we just trying to 'pass the pass mark'?

[machineman9]

A bit of a follow-on from my last post in the thread about teachers in some areas being allowed to carry firearms.

As I said, our IT teachers are the only ones that I can seem to prove wrong.


Last term we had a supply teacher for our last lesson of year 10, and unfortunately we had to do some work despite our coursework for that year having been completed.

Teacher comes along.. "George, why aren't you doing your work?"
Me.. "Because it is really boring"
Teacher... "Well this is what you have been set to do"
Me.. *grumpy*

5 minutes later

Teacher.. "Why aren't you doing your work?"
Me.. "I just really don't feel like it"
Teacher.. "Do you want me to get your real teacher so that he can set you some work?"
Me... "No because THIS is the work I've been set to do"

5 minutes later after I attempt it

Me... "Miss, the work is wrong"
Teacher... "Hmpf, what?"
Me.. "It is wrong, all of what we are doing is wrong. You asked me to do my work, but it is wrong and there is no reason why I nor anyone here should be learning things which are incorrect. I don't think I should do this because it is teaching bad practices"



It turns out the work I was doing had practically an error on every question. It is 'for GCSE' and it was a bunch of online Flash quizzes and mini-games to teach people things... teach them wrong.


Questions such as "Can a virus damage hardware"... Well yes it can (apparently not). Not so much these days, but before P4 you could launch a virus to overclock a processor which might not be able to cool itself and break

"Do Peer to Peer networks have a server?" Yes they do (apparently not) because it is the software which turns one of the computers into a host and the rest are clients. No it is not a giant Sun Microsystems machine, but it is a server!

"Where can a virus be stored?" Well, all the options!!! It was asking for just one, but the options were CD, Floppy, email, RAM and USB or something. What a ridiculous question. Without RAM you wouldn't have the capacity to load up the virus



This is just a few of hundreds. The website is Teach-ICT.com


I actually emailed them my concerns that the things on their site where horribly inaccurate and in many parts incorrect.

My responses: "Yes we know, but our boss just simply will not let us go that far indepth with our responses" and the best of all... "The things on our website are just enough for the students to pass. It is made as simplistic as possible, but still some people are finding it too hard to grasp the concepts"


I can't believe that we are learning to pass our GCSEs and learn things incorrectly before potentially being employed in IT. Of course I refuse to use that site ever again and the teachers can nag all they want. I don't understand why there isn't an 'indepth' section on their website. It seems silly to half-teach a subject.



Any thoughts?


I think IT GCSE has been constructed so poorly.

(Quarter to two literacy is baaad)

[Mictheslik]

I think IT GCSE is a little bit of a Joke.....

.mic

[machineman9]

I think IT GCSE is a little bit of a Joke.....

.mic

100% with ya.

I forgot how important it is to be able to make hundreds of pages of print screens showing how you used Excel, Publisher and Access. Oh wait... we could have been actually learning something that could help us in the future instead of using the same programs we use everyday. Fair enough I haven't used Access that much, but Excel is an easy one and publisher is the most over-used bit of advertising and poster building software in the school.

It is the people who did NOT take IT as a full GCSE and are doing it as a national subject that are doing all the fun and interesting things. Making websites, making animations, building computers on hardware sites like cclonline and gigner6...

A little bit of a joke? Or a huge kick in the teeth?