Saw this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9612063.stm


one thing that caught my eye was the poster that reads:

There are 10 types of people in this world: Those who understand binary, and those that don't

I got that straight away

ICT in this country has been failing since I took my IT GNVQ 15 years ago in High School. All it taught was Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Publisher.

I missed the days of programming on a BBC/Acorn in Secondary School.

Saw this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9612063.stm


one thing that caught my eye was the poster that reads:

There are 10 types of people in this world: Those who understand binary, and those that don't

I got that straight away

ICT in this country has been failing since I took my IT GNVQ 15 years ago in High School. All it taught was Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Publisher.

I missed the days of programming on a BBC/Acorn in Secondary School.

diablothe2nd

I'd have to concur with this. Back when I was taking my GCSE's in ICT I was expecting what I'd learn to be a bit more... Advanced, to say the least.

It's not just the secondary schools though but also the colleges. Or at least I had a similar problem at mine... I took a programming course a few years ago and what was our first project? Making a database for a car show room using Excel. My interest in the course plummeted after that and it didn't help that the teacher bailed a few months through either, whole course crashed and burned. Anyway I'm babbling...

Most ICT courses at present don't really touch programming. Not even with a ten foot stick just to say "Ew". You need to go through very specific channels to get to that level I've found. Like right now I'm trying to save some cash to enroll on a Train2Game course in VGD, which is basically the 4+ years you'd spend in college and Uni condensed into a 1 year course focused on everything you want and need to know about the games development process. Programming, art design, you name it. Just a shame the ba£$%£d thing is privately funded and is going to take £5,000 off me to do it.

I really think that programming is about the best way to teach and to train both logical and creative reasoning.

Programming has been one of my biggest hobbies since I was about 12 and looking back I can see how the skills and ways of thinking it trained has helped me massively over the years. The logical reasoning skills that you use to write a computer program are the same as those you need to solve complex maths or physics problems, as well as a host of other real-life tasks.

I think that I am a cleverer person than I would have been had I not stumbled on programming by accident and decided to teach myself. I think everyone should be given this opportunity from a young age. I honestly feel that this is the best thing we could do to increase the intelligence and capabilities of the next generation. The fact that programming is not currently present in schools is representative of how far behind the real world the education system is.

be careful with that Train2Game company. I had a rep come to my house to talk about it as I wanted to do the graphics side, but they didn't do that course at the time.

I looked into it further and it turned out one of the founders/owners used to run a pretty sketchy company.

Haven't looked into it since though so it may be a different story now.

I think one of the issues with teaching programming is the lack of simple projects which are useful. At work, all of the test rigs use DOS and so I have been having to write simple little batch files to transfer test programs between the rig and a floppy disk as well as writing the actual tests. It surprised me how simple batch files were after years of writing in C or various other languages.

I have to agree with Discharge about programming being a great tool for learning logical thought. Digital logic design and programming design methods have certainly helped me solve problems which are not electronics or computing based. I wish I could of been introduced to programming before I got to uni. Even only learning to write macros would improve the ICT GCSE syllabus.

incidentally yesterday I started working 9-5:30 again... after 2 years of twiddling my, er joypad, mouse, Wacom Intuos 4, and G27 wheel

i may have mentioned it before (can't be arsed to look at my post history) but it seems i kinda volunteered to help an indie developer making a 3d, more intuitive version of Dwarf Fortress

those that know what DF (and you should if you play minecraft and know what it's inspired by) can check out the dev blog for it here:

http://dwarvesh.blogspot.com/

the latest vid he's posted on youtube contains my first model made for him, a barrel. not as easy as you think making a curved shape using flat faces without texture warping!

he and i have worked like the clappers over the last 48 hours, and he posts updates on his blog a few days after stuff happens so you may see more of my modelling and him working with the irrlicht game engine at a later date.

right now we're collaborating on LOD objects. That is, objects with different Levels Of Detail. stuff in the distance doesn't need a huge amount of polygons, so it wastes resources rendering the high poly model barrel in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BBnVSXf5U8

although that many triangles on screen at once is a feat in itself, so kudos to him!

A lot of this thread appears to be bashing the ICT part of the UK education system.

I want to join in.

About 7 years ago, when I signed up for my A-levels, my school was offering an A-level equivalent ICT qualification. I instantly signed up, thinking I would be learning website design, basic coding, that sort of thing. That is not what happened.

They wanted us to make a powerpoint presentation that compared fitness clubs (ICT?), and not only that, we had to prepare 3 drafts of the presentation before the final copy; text only, text and image, text with image and formatting, then the final with full formatt....

Suffice to say I dropped the subject before the project was complete.

I genuinely do not think this country (the UK) is prepared to make the most out of it's most intelligent and inquisitive individuals. Discharge managed to keep his education in logic and analytic thinking going by self-studying coding. I had to do a similar thing by self-studying discrete mathematics. This is a huge failure in the education system, which should be nurturing and developing these traits in those individuals suitable and willing to study such subjects. Basically, I think the UK education system is shite. But that's my opinion.

Anyway, rant over. Nice barrels D2

The Education system in this country is actually good. But it has so many short-falls that they blight the entire system.

ICT, I remember the GCSE. Pointless as hell, everyone already knows what it is about. However being forced to learn about antiquated technology is just abysmal.

*Had to learn about tapes and floppys...*

Every kid should have a DOS box and Qbasic 4.5.

True Story.

I agree ICT is mainly them banging on about e saftey and bloodly word and powerpoint
It's Boring as hell

The Education system in this country is actually good. But it has so many short-falls that they blight the entire system.

ICT, I remember the GCSE. Pointless as hell, everyone already knows what it is about. However being forced to learn about antiquated technology is just abysmal.

*Had to learn about tapes and floppys...*

Mulan

Oh gawd... I can still remember that. When they gave you a piece of paper with a picture of some shitty old Windows 98 system, and you had to go and label all the parts. You should be doing that in History class year 3 primary, not first year of secondary. >.>

Delete Me

There are 10 types of people in this world: Those who understand binary, and those that don't

I got that straight away

diablothe2nd

I don't. 10 is 1 in binary. It should be 01.

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128

Stucuk

Wrong way round stucuky.

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1

Meh you beat me.

Binary is written backwards.

64 - 32 - 16 - 8 - 4 - 2 - 1

So 10 is in fact 2. 11 would be 3, and 100 is 4.

And as discussed before, Minecrafts release date is 11.11.11

Lets take that as a binary string, 111111

And convert it to hexidecimal, 3F

11.11.11 = 3F

F = Fail

3 Fails on 11.11.11

1. SMP Servers
2. Minecraft itself
3. Bukkit



Back on topic anyway, paha.

And as discussed before, Minecrafts release date is 11.11.11

Lets take that as a binary string, 111111

And convert it to hexidecimal, 3F

11.11.11 = 3F

F = Fail

3 Fails on 11.11.11

1. SMP Servers
2. Minecraft itself
3. Bukkit



Back on topic anyway, paha.

BRooNiE

Also, F is the sixth letter on the alphabet, therefore 3F is FFF, which is, in numbers, 666, the number of the Beast, from the Bible.

But yeah, come 1.9, come borked SMP. That's what every update gives you. : )

And as discussed before, Minecrafts release date is 11.11.11

Lets take that as a binary string, 111111

And convert it to hexidecimal, 3F

11.11.11 = 3F

F = Fail

3 Fails on 11.11.11

1. SMP Servers
2. Minecraft itself
3. Bukkit



Back on topic anyway, paha.

BRooNiE

Also, F is the sixth letter on the alphabet, therefore 3F is FFF, which is, in numbers, 666, the number of the Beast, from the Bible.

But yeah, come 1.9, come borked SMP. That's what every update gives you. : )

TheMZL

So minecraft is directly linked to the beast?

didn't notch change his mind on 11.11.11 being that it's rememberance day?

converting the unicode word of "minecraft" to hex reads:
6D 69 6E 65 63 72 61 66 74

your devils theory seems to have more weight

Also, F is the sixth letter on the alphabet, therefore 3F is FFF, which is, in numbers, 666, the number of the Beast, from the Bible.

But yeah, come 1.9, come borked SMP. That's what every update gives you. : )

TheMZL

But FFF in hex colours (specifically CSS2 onwards) is White. Surely white is not the colour of the beast.