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Story: BCS: UK tech industry faces skills crisis

Posted by: 1000267201 (Sunday 19 November 2006, 7:51 PM)

The problem is even bigger

Nigel is right to say that computing should not be taught and promoted only as a technical support activity, but also as something involving creativity and intellectual excitement: i.e. learning to design, analyse, document, compare, criticise, extend working systems, instead of merely using tools others have developed. Some of us recommended that about 30 years ago. But instead governments, industry, parents, and schools started teaching computing as a preparation for jobs where pre-existing tools would be used. So the brightest school kids think it is useful but too boring to study at university (like cooking?).

To remedy this, far more will be needed than a change of curriculum, and far more than simply convincing politicians, parents, industrialists, and teachers. We cannot magically create thousands of teachers who are equipped to teach computing in the right way (as some used to do in the 1980s using BBC micros), or the hardware, software and technical support required to provide a good infrastructure for the right kind of learning. A possible (partial) solution might be to develop a national education-server (preferably distributed over centres of expertise) supporting a lot of kinds of learning and teaching with much mutual help by teachers and learners.

The problems and a possible solution along those lines are discussed here
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/compedu.html

Aaron Sloman
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/
Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham

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