Creating A Digitally Focused Generation

And so it happen … someone in a commisioned report for the Scotland government said:
Photo by Alexandre Debiève on Unsplash

Creating A Digitally Focused Generation?

And so it happened … Mark Logan (former COO at Skyscanner) — in a commissioned report for the Scotland government — said:

“At school, Computer Science should be seen as equal to Maths and Science subjects”

So how can this be done? Well, the focus must be a root-and-branch approach to integrating coding into every level at school, and then onto university/college. This means that there were be transitions from where we are now — having very few students who can code naturally — to one where every child who leaves school will be able to code, and in understanding how technology actually works.

I’d say, we need the following:

  • Make Computer Science a compulsory topic at secondary school for Year 1 to Year 4, and then optional at Year 5 and Year 6.
  • Create high-level (and fairly simple) objectives of what we want to achieve, such as “We want every child to understand how data is captured, process and analysed for machine learning, and to make reasoned judgements on the information provided”.
  • Think more about the future than the past.
  • Get interesting data sets, that make kids think about their world, and how data can provide evidence for improvements.
  • Show how computer science will solve key problems in our world.
  • Get kids switched on to ethical and moral issues related to computer science, especially in AI, IoT and Cybersecurity.
  • For more advanced study at secondary school, focus on themes rather than topics, and integrate code examples.
  • Teach kids coding early — when they are learning the basics of numbers, and by secondary school, assume they can code, and then get on with the interesting things. The days of needing to develop 100s of lines of code for a complex problem are going, and a language such as Python allows many complex things to be done, within a few lines of code.
  • Forget trying to attract kids into coding, just see it as natural as Maths and English, so don’t just integrate coding for games, in order to make the subject interesting.
  • Standardise on a simple platform (eg Raspberry PI) and which allows access from home, and set up anywhere, and gets kids into Linux and networking.
  • Standardise on one core language. In order to integrate with lessons, Python works well, and would work well in Maths, and Physics.
  • Share resources on-line, and use GitHub for lesson plans.
  • Integrate it naturally into key topics, especially in maths and science, and share online lesson plans. Jupyter notebooks are perfect for this and would allow deep integration into maths and science.
  • Do not create syllabuses which are dull and unfocused. At secondary school focus each year on a topic and which matches the jobs market. Get kids to understand the flaws in our digital world, and how they could be addresses.
  • Forget about exams, and make coursework based and continually assessed.

In order to focus, we need to make computer science a standard topic at school, and then drop the patchwork syllabus and lack of common standards. A possible model is to focus on key topics for each year at secondary school. A natural progression would be for Devices and Systems in Year 1, in order to give a basic introduction to the R-PI, Linux and Python (and some basic networking). It would be a great chance to do some fun things with R-PIs, and where kids could replicate at home and share the experience with parents — a bit like the BBC Micro revolution in the 1990s.

Then, after the foundation year, a natural progression is then onto IoT and a deeper dive into networking, and how the Internet really works. Year 3 and Year 4 would then dive into core topics of Data Science and Cybersecurity (setting every child up for their future careers in health, engineering, and so on), followed by an optional Year 5 for a major project which will allow them to focus on building something real:

Conclusions

These are just my thoughts on creating the digital-focused workforce of the future. What is obvious, is that there will have to be significant investment in driving any solution forward, but the options are to have another generation who are switched off from coding. The subject at school has been on the slide for nearly a decade — with patchy, boring and unfocused syllabuses — and has poor gender balances: