And people say that ICT in schools is vital.

I know that I post way too much about school these days, but I’ve had it up to here with people telling me that ICT GCSE is absolutely vital and really educative and representative of the working world.
In just over one half term, this is what we’ve done in my GCSE IT class:
1. Read the case study. I’ll admit it: reading the case study is not actually that unreasonable. However, I do have an issue (I know I’m overreacting) with the incredibly ridiculous way the case study is written.
The scenario is that you are Jo, who is working at a medical practice. Brian, your boss, has given you this stuff to do. There’s 3 different projects that we do this year, the current one being an interactive presentation for a medical practice.
However, it’s rather difficult to see why Brian doesn’t do it himself, as he has decided every last little detail of the presentation, right down to the number of slides, how they’re linked, the layout of the slides, the text that needs to go on them, the pictures that need to be used…the presentation could be made in less time than it would take to have the ‘conversation’ that explains what you need to do.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of the case study to show just how irritating these conversations are (Jo also keeps an infuriating ‘notebook’, which is written rather comically), so I’m going to instead show here some of the case study we did last year, which was about building a website:
Student:                        We have used a product called ‘Dreamweaver’ a bit at school.  I reckon I could use that to build a web site for you.

Erin:                             Dreamweaver?  Funny name!

Student:                        To be honest I need to learn how to use it much better first of all and then I can get back to you about what exactly it can do.

Erin:                             Fair enough.  But I would need to be sure that you know how to use it well because I don’t want the web site to look bad or as if it has been done by my 3 year old son!

Student:                        It will look good but I do have to go back to school to talk to my ICT teacher.

Erin:                             OK, but I want to get moving on this quickly.  The first thing I want you to do is to go away and learn how to use Dreamweaver and then come back to me with a document explaining how Dreamweaver can help us to build a web site and why having a web site would be better than running an advertisement on the local radio.

Student:                        What will that document look like?

Erin:                             Well I suggest that give it a title like; ‘How Dreamweaver will help Premier Leisure’ to build a web site?’  You could have 2 columns:  one which has a title like ‘Feature of Dreamweaver’ and another in which you can explain what that feature does to help us build a web site’.  At the bottom you could write about why a web site would be better for us than running some averts on the local radio station.

Student:                        Why do I need to produce this document.

Erin:                             Well I need some reassurance before we start to spend money on a computer and the Dreamweaver software that it will actually solve our problem.  My boss, Samantha, will take some convincing as well so it needs to be very detailed.

Student:                        OK I will contact my ICT teacher, learn how to use Dreamweaver        and I will get back to you with this document describing how Dreamweaver can help us to build a web site and about why a web site would be better for you than running some averts on the local radio station.
.
Erin:                             I am really looking forward to hearing from you.

Aside from removing my school’s initials, that’s exactly how it appears in the document. Later on, the ICT teacher
speaks in the form of a table and also quotes the file paths. ‘Nuff said.
2.  Complete the ‘analysis’. This involves filling in these questions in absurd detail:
THE FORM OF THE OUTPUT  (What is the project going to look like?)

THE INFORMATION TO BE OUTPUT  (What things need to go into the presentation.)
THE DATA NEEDED TO PRODUCE THE OUTPUT AND THE SOURCE OF THE DATA (Where do I find the things to go into the presentation)
DESIRED OUTCOMES AND PERFORMANCES CRITERIA (What must go into the presentation)
TESTING (Does the system need to be tested? Yes or no)
If anyone could fill me in on the difference between ‘what things need to go into the.

3. Page layouts. These are detailed mock-ups of every slide, containing all the font sizes, background colours, details of images to be used etc. I can see the point behind doing these because planning is important and if this were a big-money enterprise, the people paying for it would definitely want to see plans..but for a 5-slide presentation that you could knock up in half an hour? It would be far quicker to make the entire presentation, have it be crap and make it all again than it would be to make the page layouts once over.

4. Write about the psychology of colour. I kid you not! We wrote about 2 pages about the psychology of colour and how this would affect the colours we chose for our presentation. This is patently ridiculous because (a) even if you did decide to research this stuff before making a 5-slide presentation for a medical practice, you wouldn’t bother to write about it and (b) we (theoretically) don’t actually have imput on what colours we use, because part 4 is to:

5.Do a font and colour survey and spend ages trying to get people to answer it. Everyone fills in the votes themselves, though, thereby rendering this useless – and again, who would actually go to this level of detail for a 5-slide presentation for a medical practice?

6. Font and colour justification. Basically, write a paragraph about every single font size, font colour, background colour etc. that you have considered using and then why you have decided why or why not to use it. I can’t think of a single reason anyone would actually want such a document (the idea? sure. this level of detail? no way), especially IN A FIVE-SLIDE PRESENTATION ABOUT A FUCKING MEDICAL PRACTICE!

7. Picture survey. We were given a load of pictures and told to survey everyone in the class (at the same time as they’re surveying us) to see what pictures they’d like on each slide. As if anybody cares…insert the usual spiel about why nobody would go to this much bother.

8. Picture justification. You guessed it! Write about all the pictures and why you decided to (not) use them. Groan.

9. Implementation plan. This reads something like this:

1. Open up MS Powerpoint.
2. Create a new presentation.
3. Create a slide.
4. Type heading.
5. Type subheading.
6. Insert picture.
7. etc. etc. etc.

I can’t see any reason whatsoever why anyone in any company would ever want anything like this document to be produced. If you’ve hired someone who knows how to use the software they’re going to use, then they’d do all that without thinking. If you’ve hired someone who doesn’t know how to use the software they’re going to use or how to do what they’ve been asked, why did you hire them in the first place? (And is having them write out ‘type in cell’ etc. etc. really going to make it better?)

10. Software justification. This is a document explaining what needs to be done (i.e. text needs to be typed) and what features of MS Powerpoint allow you to do this. The strange thing is that we’re only allowed to use one piece of software to make the presentation, so the justification really is ‘the exam board says so’, especially when there’s better software out there. Also, all the tools have to be in bold, so you end up writing things like, ‘I will use the keyboard to type because MS Powerpoint allows you to type on a slide’ as if this is something specific to MS Powerpoint.

11. Testing plan. Fill in these columns: test no., what I am testing, how I will test it, test data, expected result. The only thing we need to test is the hyperlinks, so this document consists of one row saying something like ‘I will click on the hyperlink from this page to that page and see if it works’ with only the names of the pages changed.

12. Make the presentation! Yes! It really takes that long! In excess of six weeks of planning is really needed for something that could be built in ten minutes! But oh no…it goes on.

Firstly, you need to take ’skills shots’. This means taking a screenshot of every single ’skill’ you use. A skill is opening the software, typing in a cell, saving the document…every last thing you do. I can’t see why this is necessary – text doesn’t go bold by itself, so if you have bold text in your presentation, obviously, you put it there! Ah well. You then have to annotate every single ’skills shot’ to say what you did and why you did it (i.e. ‘I opened MS Powerpoint by clicking on the shortcut to MS Powerpoint on the desktop. I did this so that I could open MS Powerpoint in order to actually build my presentation because it’s pretty damned difficult to use any software to do something without actually opening the software.’)

You also have to save several versions of your presentation as you make it. Fine – I can see why the exam board might want something like that to see how you actually accomplished the task, even though there’s no possible way of awarding any marks for it. You then have to annotate each version to say what you have done, why you have done it and what you’re going to do next (does this sound familiar?). And now, the piece de resistance: you take a screenshot of your annotations and annotate the screenshot! We have to annotate our own fucking annotations! And you thought it was easy…

13. Evaluate the whole damn thing. We haven’t got as far as this yet, so I’m not particularly familiar with the particular idiocies of it, but I’m sure you can imagine.

I am absolutely for teaching ICT in schools. Teaching it in this manner, though, is ridiculous: it’s a qualification in making up lots of bullshit to say absolutely nothing at all and has nothing to do with computers whatsoever.

This is the valuable qualification people are so keen to encourage.