Saturday, January 3, 2009

Undergraduate intro to IT syllabus, a list of requirements for computer and internet literacy

I am trying to gather ideas on the skills and concepts that should be considered mandatory for first-year college students. I have seen teachers do everything from demonstrating the mechanics of hard disk drives to spending two weeks on typing, and in many Japanese colleges, computer literacy is a just a class on using Microsoft Office. Please post what you think should be taught in an Introduction to IT. Also feel free to post summaries of what you have seen people teach in Intro to IT. This discussion began as a thread on the schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net mailing list, which is "An open forum for discussing topics related to education, FLOSS, and technology trends" hosted at http://www.schoolforge.net/.

6 comments:

Shinmaikeru said...

Some suggestions to get us started (please note, I am just
brainstorming at this point):

1. The dangers of posting information online, such as slanderous
comments about others, photos of binge drinking and nudity, bragging
photos of juvenile and reckless vandalism or misbehavior... all of
which will someday be read by a job or college interviewer.
2. How to mount a network share on Mac, Win, and Linux.
3. OpenOffice
4. How to read email suspiciously (don't open attachments, don't click
links, etc.)
5. The importance of keeping a system up-to-date... particularly Windows.
6. Using a spreadsheet to manage information in database-like lists.
7. Power-searching on Google.
8. How to write a subject line on email that will tell the recipient
that the message is not spam.
9. Techniques for detecting phishing.

Shinmaikeru said...

Burkhard Wölfel suggested:

0. How to find information on the web and how to ask questions the smart way

Shinmaikeru said...

Marilyn Hagle suggested moving the discussion from schoolforge's school-discuss mailing list to a persistent platform.

Shinmaikeru said...

J. Tim Denny wrote:
There has been quite a bit of work done in various parts of the world to define ICT competency standards... UNESCO has lead in defining teacher competency standards, yet individual countries are moving forth to define standards expected and assessment methods to meet those levels.

Recently I have been looking to the Philippines as they suggest that they will soon come up with sets of standards for 4 sectors..
http://cict-hcdg.wikispaces.com/National+ICT+Competency+Standards

Using international ICT competency standards developed by various recognized bodies, CICT-HCDG is currently working on the following ICT Competency Standards:

1. National ICT Competency Standard - Basic (NICS-Basic) which defines the basic ICT skills for all Filipinos from high school level onwards;
2. National ICT Competency Standard – Advanced (NICS- Advanced) which defines the additional ICT skills of all Filipinos who graduate from college;
3. National ICT Competency Standard for Teachers (NICS-Teachers) which defines the ICT skills needed by teachers in basic and higher education; and
4. National ICT Competency Standard for Civil Servants (NICS-CS) which defines the basic knowledge and skills of ICT Specialists (Systems Analyst, Computer Programmer, Network Administrator, Database Administrator, Web Specialist, Telecommunications Engr., etc.) in government.

Shinmaikeru said...

J. Tim Denny suggested as a resource the link
http://www.openicdl.org.za/
which is the open source version of the ICDL, which is an international qualification in end user computing.

Shinmaikeru said...

Marilyn Hagle suggested as resources the following links:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm
and
http://ocw.tufts.edu/CourseList
and
http://www.opencontentalliance.org/contributors/