Essential IT skills for kids

[Philgr]

My daughter has started secondary school (12yrs+) and I'm pretty appalled at what appears to be their IT education syllabus

What do you consider essential IT skills for today's children ?

 

[satcomer]

Try the book Networking for Dummies. It will open even your eyes.

 

[vkd]

Typing.

 

[2984839]

Ctrl+F: This simple shortcut is the best invention ever. It has probably saved me years of time.

Advanced Google search operators: Much easier to do research for high school and university projects.

 

[D.T.]

Selfies
Minecraft
Trolling

 

[Philgr]

Selfies
Minecraft
Trolling

It seems she has these skills already - looks like she is ready for the big wide world #

 

[Jessica Lares]

I think schools focus too much on using office suites for writing papers, and don't do enough to encourage its uses for other situations.

Generally speaking, there are more important things they need to learn.

 

[Philgr]

Generally speaking, there are more important things they need to learn.

I don't completey disagree with this but I do believe that kids today need to be provided with a relevant skill set for the outside world, I see this time and time again in the work place, where the youngsters just starting out don't even have the most basic IT skills for the work place, the end result is very intelligent kids struggle with the most basic tasks and wasting time and effort

 

[johnnilcru]

Paint - this paves the way for more powerful applications.
Gaming - Oh... no better way to get good keyboard/mouse motor skills
teach them to use commands (Windows/Linux) instead of relying solely on the mouse- this paves the way for better programming skills in the future.
Microsoft excel/spreadsheet - no matter what his field of expertise in the future, this will ALWAYS come in handy.

 

[satcomer]

I Generally speaking, there are more important things they need to learn.

No there is NOT! You are part of the reason why women are not interested in tech! I feel this why most women can't even change a flat tire is because of this kind of attitude!

Women should at least have a good general idea of how networking tech actually works. Plus they need to learn once it is on the Internet it stays there definitely!

I bet you don' t even understand wireless routers and the proper wireless channels to get the true channel range for the faster speeds.

 

[Mousse]

Paint - this paves the way for more powerful applications.

OooOoOOo...a gateway app. Soon they'll be in to Photoshop. Oh the humanity.

Gaming - Oh... no better way to get good keyboard/mouse motor skills teach them to use commands (Windows/Linux) instead of relying solely on the mouse- this paves the way for better programming skills in the future.

Eh? How so? I used CLI for well over 10 years but that didn't do jack to help me learn how to program. Learning Pascal, then C help me learn the basics. Learning about data structures and algorithms helped a lot. That does it, I'm going to speak with the grand kids in C++.

Microsoft excel/spreadsheet - no matter what his field of expertise in the future, this will ALWAYS come in handy.

This applies doubly so to agriculture. As Farm Brown is so fond of telling me:

"You spreadsheet in columns, you spreadsheet in rows.
The more you spreadsheet, the faster it grows."

 

[VI™]

nvm

 

[AX338]

The UK newly issued national curriculum includes.....

"Computing will teach pupils how to write code. Pupils aged five to seven will be expected to "understand what algorithms are" and to "create and debug simple programs". By the age of 11, pupils will have to "design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28987787

Can't say I knew what an algorithm was at 5, not could I debug computer programs.

Really who comes up with this crap?

 

[vigilant]

I don't know if this is a joke or not, but I'll give you the run down on how I plan on raising my kid, if/when they come around.

During the first year, there will be a bluetooth speaker system setup in the room to play calming music for our chid.

Once our child is old enough to enjoy TV, there will be a strictly limited AppleTV that the child can enjoy, and as they grow up their access to things will increase with proper enforcements in place.

I'd imagine by the age of 5 or 6, I'd start explaining very very high level home networking things with our child, and let them have probably a rubber covered iPad Mini. The iPad Mini like many other items will be extremely limited.

As their curiosity continues to peak, and more freedom is requested, the ability to learn and do more will be based on their willingness to learn about things and do their own problem solving. I think a proper amount of nurturing and guidance, with their own managed freedom would be a good motivator.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Troubleshooting/fault isolation. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about software, hardware, health, social interaction... The skill to understand the difference between symptom and cause, precedence, sequence, roots, dependencies...

But then, this is just a subset of Logic. Logic, yeah, that's the ticket.

 

[johnnilcru]

OooOoOOo...a gateway app. Soon they'll be in to Photoshop. Oh the humanity.



Eh? How so? I used CLI for well over 10 years but that didn't do jack to help me learn how to program. Learning Pascal, then C help me learn the basics. Learning about data structures and algorithms helped a lot. That does it, I'm going to speak with the grand kids in C++.



This applies doubly so to agriculture. As Farm Brown is so fond of telling me:

"You spreadsheet in columns, you spreadsheet in rows.
The more you spreadsheet, the faster it grows."

It's fine if you don't realise the greatness of paint.. few do: http://www.businessinsider.com/ms-paint-artworks-2014-7?op=1

If using command lines didn't help you understand OS architecture, you were probably doing it wrong. I've started with Pascal as well, then moved to C++, C, php, javascript... but I'm not going to be such a hypocrite to deny the importance of using a DOS PC in my childhood - somewhere, that's what encouraged me to pursue my studies in that field.

About the spreadsheet... from my understanding of English, the topic reads "Essential IT skills for kids". I'm sure you can find plenty of IT-professionals that can't use spreadsheet - because it's so unimportant, right?