A Magic Square Game for 7 year olds
A small magic square game, just a step beyond addition. Comments welcome.
Archive for July, 2007
Class 2 Computer Science Curriculum
I have a text book in front of me, seems to be specific to a school called Kensri in Hebbal, Bangalore, so not sure about other schools. On the cover, it says “Computer Technology”. This text book is best described as a user manual for MS Paint. Each page describes one of the icons and then puts out an exercise. I am yet to form an opinion on this book but a few things come to mind based on personal experience.
Just having a computer around seems to be enough to attract a 5+ year old to play with it. Paint is simple to use and provides immediate gratification, children seem to get hooked on and learn quickly, without being coaxed or coerced or taught. So then would a computer lab not be more productive by just putting children in front of Paint and letting them explore rather than have a user manual type text book. Presumably the book is just meant for structuring activity and most of the action still happens on a terminal. But still, one can’t help thinking that this is a retrograde step: while all of modern software and UI is aimed at overcoming the deficiencies of a linear, sequential, old style book by providing richer interactive and navigational experience, here one is taking a rich UI and converting it back to the same old linear, sequential, old style book.
Anyway, the cover also says “Theme 1″, I am waiting to see what else is in store, maybe a user manual for word, excel, powerpoint etc will follow in quick succession.
High School Computer Science Curriculum- Part 2
I am attempting to locate text books used in CBSE and ISC. In an excellent initiative, the NCERT (National center for education and research in teaching, India) has brought online its CBSE text books. Just to make my task difficult, the only text books that are missing are for Computer Science:-) One can read all other books in glorious PDF, indexed by chapter, and colors intact! So I am locating paper text books for computer science and maybe will get in touch with NCERT to demand that CS books also be put online.
The situation with ISC is far more complex. Since the choice of text books is left to the school, the quality of the course varies even more dramatically across schools, unlike in CBSE. Again, I am attempting to locate some text books for ISC. Will update soon.
Locating final examination question paper for CBSE has been a bit easier. Here are a few sample exam papers.
Wheras ISC papers are hard to get on line. The administrating body of ISC, the CISCE (Council of Indian School Certificate Examinations) appears to be just that, a body for administering examinations, again, unlike the CBSE, which is concerned about education. The website of CISCE is very minimal in terms of information for students or teachers. However, the data for the number of students that appeared for the XII and X exams is available: 25,000 and 65,000, respectively. However, the year for which this data applies is not mentioned.
Unable to find a similar number for CBSE, though the site mentions that there are about 9000 affiliated schools. I need to get back to find numbers for CBSE/CISCE in comparison with the State school boards across India. This will allow us to focus our efforts based on the maximum benefit for maximum number principle. For the moment, I will focus on CBSE.
It will be good to locate the text books used in Israel high schools that are following El-Gazer and Harel committee’s syllabus. I have not been able to locate any so far. Any pointers?
My idea was to start with the curriculum, the syllabus, the text books and the question papers as the basis for understanding the current state of computer science in high schools. Even a cursory look at the available material for CBSE, by all accounts the highest quality framework for high school education in India, wakes one up to the magnitude of the task ahead.
High School Computer Science Curriculum
Based on nothing more than gut feel, I have strongly recommended, to anyone who has made the mistake of asking for my opinion, against taking up computer science as a subject in higher secondary school (11th and 12th standard).
I am now taking up a scientific approach to evaluate the basis for my gut feeling. I am starting with the prescribed computer science syllabi for 11th and 12th standard in both CBSE and ISC, going back a bit to look at the 9th and 10th standard syllabi for anything relating to computing and IT in both the school systems. It is intresting to note that there is no notion of a curriculum. There is just a syllabus that is available.
There are a large number of students who take computer science as option in the higher secondary school systems of the State Boards, but I will leave the study of these for a later time or for others to explore.
- CBSE Higher secondary CS syllabus
- CBSE Secondary School (9th and 10th)
- ISC HIgher Secondary CS syllabus
- ICSE (9th and 10th)
The syllabus along with the text book determines the intended scope of the material. In CBSE, we have a single text book for each subject that is brought out by NCERT and hence we have the option of studying the effectiveness of the syllabus in conjunction with the text book. However, in both ICSE and ISC, the Council does not prescirbe a text book, but leaves it to the discretion of the schools to specify text books, thus making it harder to study the quality of the prescribed ISC/ICSE computer science content.
A meta question immediately comes up. What is the basis for evlauation of the school CS curriculum? What are we measuring against? Is there an ideal CS curriculum for schools? There is no information I could gather for the above syllabi: Who formulated these? What are the qualifications of those that created the syllabi? What is the curricular basis for the current contents? Given the lack of such information, a global search for CS school curricula brought up the following:
Here at least I could get some idea of the syllabus, the basis for the syllabus and the identiy and qualifications of the authors. We could possibly study this and see if this is a good basis for our evaluation. A brief glance through the curriculum caused some red flags, especially with things like ‘keyboard with correct fingering’ as an expected proficiency for 5th graders. A more promising resource was referred to by the ACM report:
The Curriculum and Course Syllabi for a High-School program in Computer science, by J. El-Gazer and D. Harel, created for the Minsitry of Education in Israel in 1999 and since widely implemented in Israeli schools. I was very positively biased even before I looked at the report since I am a great admirer of Harel’s book, Algorthmics. A detailed reading of the report convinced me that this is an excellent basis for our purpose. Unlike the ACM effort which has fallen into the trap of technology, this curriculum clearly focuses on the science of computer science, and the quality and attention to detail shines through. So I declare as closed, my search for an objective standard for high-school curriculum.
And here is the report: Ministry of Education, Israel, High-School CS curriculum.
What a contrast this is to the CBSE syllabus linked above!
The authors realise that teaching such a curriculum requires teachers who have a good grasp of CS and some more. The following paper outlines their thoughts on this important issue.
What (else) should CS educators know?
This report has made the task of evaluating CBSE/ISC curriculum much easier. Unfortunately, most of it will have to be trashed:-(