I am teaching since February (second part)

first part -- second part

My first month of teaching is over. It was full of action. During the second week came inspection from the department of education. I had some problems with papers. I could not find some document I did not need for 10 years; after one week I found it, but it cost me a lot of time. Then came the spring holidays, and I really needed them. Now we had maturity exams. I spent one day as a guard; really boring work. The rest of the year should be calmer.

The teacher's work includes a study of many documents, and filling many papers. Sometimes it feels like the teaching itself and the paperwork are 50:50. (This is not exactly true, but it feels like this, because the lessons pass quickly.) I guess that even in this very moment, someone at the department of education is convinced that teachers have nothing to do, so he or she is creating for them another form or document. The class book (maybe this is not the correct English word, but I hope you understand what I mean) must be filled using blue pen, not black pen; the empty fields must be crossed diagonally from top left corner to bottom right cornet, never in the other direction. If you make a mistake, you must rewrite the whole page. Filling the class book is most boring, because it has to be done at every lesson; other papers must be filled once a day, once a month, or just once a year; but even the lecture about maturity exams can make me feel tired. And I have it easier; the class teachers have to fill twice as much papers.

Leaving out the maintenance of computers, we are getting to the essence of teaching informatics. I tried to find out how teachers at other schools are doing it, but it seems to me that each school does it differently. Even the teaching plans from department of education are vague; there are always 5 or 8 items, and teacher should choose 2 of them (however, I like it better this way). So after hearing many very different opinions, finally I have to make my own. It is also difficult to discuss this topic with teachers of other subjects; at their lessons students do not have they favourite toy at the reach of hand. So here are my teacher opinions and presuppositions:

All students of the same grade must learn the same content at informatics. It is unacceptable to teach different things to those who will or will not take maturity exams from computer science, or to teach different things to boys and girls. Students often say: "We do not need to know this; we will not choose to take maturity exams from informatics," or "Computers are for boys, we are interested in completely different things." But in reality I do not see significant difference between boys' groups and girls' groups (we have such groups, because the classes are divided to groups between informatics and gymnastics). The smallest kids are greatly interested in computers, almost all of them. The oldest are in all groups divided into part which is interested in lessons, willing to click through, and understands it; and part that ignores whatever happens at the lesson, and then complain that does not understand. The only difference in the highest grade is that the ignorant boys only try to be invisible, and when it fails, they will do what is necessary; but the ignorant girls will always object and say that they will never need these things in their lives. I guess this attitude is not limited to computers, because one young miss already told me that of all subjects in school she will need only English, and she knows it better than me. I am not sure about the last thing (when did she hear me speaking English? or does she read my blog? possibly she can be right about this), but I cannot accept the theory than "informatics is only for boys"; at least because my sister now works in IT, and she makes more money than me.

About maturity exams: we have optional informatics only in last two years (that I do not teach now); in previous years it is mandatory for everyone, so until then everyone will learn the same. The only question is what should be part of those mandatory years. For me the mark of difficulty are the "Monitor" tests. (The "Monitor" was an independent test for high-schools, done in previous years in all schools in Slovakia, comparing skills between students of different schools. It became obvious that different schools have extremely different level of difficulty, so the resulting grades were completely unfair. Authors of "Monitor" wanted to make a benchmark for all schools.) But it is not possible to learn half of things during the optional lessons. In other subjects the preparation for maturity exams mostly means repeating of what was taught previously, just some more repeating and more details. So this means to me that every student must understand the basics of programming, and the ones preparing for maturity exams will only practice some more difficult algorithms, and will work on their own projects. (By the way the programming is not the only thing that students consider too difficult. One student explained to me that if he will ever need to add two numbers in Excel, he will have a secretary who will do it for him. Luckily, this attitude is not shared by all, otherwise we could expect a serious shortage of secretaries in future.)

Informatics grows rapidly. The situation today is different than ten years ago; ten years after it will be different than today. This should be considered by adult people discussing what were they learning; and also by students argumenting what skills are necessary at job market today. Fifteen years ago almost everyone was using MS DOS, there was no MS Window 95 yet. At high schools they learned text editor T602 (a Czech product, very famous here), at universities they learned Norton Commander, only the few lucky people had access to Internet. Which of these miracles of "computer technology" would impress someone today in your curicullum? Ten years old kids often know more. And I think that most things that laypeople consider enough today ("Word and Excel, this is all people really use") will ten or fifteen years later seem equally pathetic. If we over-optimize the education to today's needs, current high-school students will later in their first jobs laugh about the school, or complain that they did not learn something useful instead.

How to prevent this? First, instead of technical details we should concentrate on general principles. Text editor T602 is not used anymore, but text editors as a type of program still exist, and probably will exist for a long time. Keyboard shortcuts in T602 menu are completely useless today, but nowadays programs have menus too. So the teacher should not talk about technical details on one specific program, but about ideas this program represents. Even better, teacher should encourage students to some flexibility when using different programs for the same task; in long term they will surely need it. Of course many will complain about teaching the theory instead of "working with computer" full time. But...

Informatics is also a theory, not only clicking to the machine. I have encountered opinions, that the real informatics is only when children are "clicking at computer", preferably "clicking on the internet"; and that each minute spent by teacher speaking theory is a completely wasted time, which should be instead spent by the real informatics, that is clicking. Some people even argue what we should just give to students a modern sufficiently equipped computer, and just let them click and browse web for a long time; then they will discover everything on their own, but the teacher who instead explains something, just deprives them of this wonderful experience. -- Now imagine the same pedagogical approach for example at chemistry: we would let students enter the lab, give them piles of chemicals, and whoever survives will no doubt discover the periodic table of elements. Would you consider this rational? Well, also I do not consider rational the idea that after sufficiently long clicking student will discover all rules of informatics. Some things just have to be told, written on the blackboard, written on paper, however heretical it may seem to do these things when sitting at the computer. In a perfect world, teacher should be able to explain everything in an interesting way; but even without it, student must be able to understand information like "one kilobyte has 1024 bytes" without being accompanied by multi-medial presentation.

Some students tell me that they have computer at home and use it for years, so they deserve the best grades at informatics, because they know everything. Surely, let's just buy them scalpels too, and they can also receive the diploma from medicine. ;-) Many would like to have ten (or more) free minutes at the end of lesson, to do whatever they want. Then they would usually start some game they already played hundred times, or connect to web forum they already spent years at. So the benefit to learning informatics would be zero. I was surprised to hear many teachers recommend me to give students some free minutes at the end of lesson, as a reward for good work. I disagree with my colleagues for the following reasons:

The lesson is for learning, the break is for resting. If the student does not have computer with internet at home, and parents are not willing to pay for computer games or internet coffee, it is not a school's duty to change this. The duty of school is to educate. But if the student has computer with internet at home, but he cannot spend a morning without playing or chatting, it seems like dependence, and should be discussed by a psychologist.
It is immoral to promise students extra reward for just following their basic duties. What do teachers of other subjects use as reward? Can students play cards last ten minutes of Slovak language lesson, if they paid attention during lesson? Also this kind of agreement usually does not work; the students agree, break their part of agreement, but at the end of lesson demand teacher to follow his part.
If the students get the habit of playing or chatting during lessons, it makes it more difficult to concentrate during the rest of lesson. This is how human mind works; even for adult person it is difficult to focus on work at the place he or she usually uses for fun.

Informatics is necessary, as much as mathematics and natural sciences. Yes, I realize, that today the trends in education are opposite -- less natural sciences, less mathematics, more languages. And I consider this trend deeply flawed. Its long-term results will be students, who will think that the Earth is flat, but at least they will be able to express "their opinion" in ten different foreign languages. Actually, they will not; they will only speak in one foreign language, the right one, with a one-hundred-percent accent and perfect arrogance. America is our idol!

Informatics is a science about using information, not about using programs. The program is just a tool for processing information; if it fits our needs, we can use it, if it does not, we can replace it, or create our own. (The exception is computer games, where the application itself is the most important thing.) The goal of lesson is to teach students for example "writing and processing text", not "using Word". It follows that we do not have to explain all menu items of Word, and that we should mention a few important function that Words does not have. Writing a manual for program is producer's job, not teacher's. Teacher should explain the typical tasks related to text processing, and show how to do them in Word and other programs. Instead of teaching toys like WordArt (this is the part that students really can learn alone if they wish), teacher should show for comparison other programs like OOo Writer or some web text processor.

On informatics lessons it is best to use only free software. Students can freely download it from Internet and install at home. The most dilligent ones can use it to prepare better for lessons, but all of them can use for their own benefit what they learned at school. By using free software school can teach students to respect authors' rights, without becoming a dealer for selected software companies. School can use larger portfolio of programs for teaching, without negative impact on school budget.

These are my general opinions about teaching computer science on gymnasium; the details will follow sometimes later.

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