What do they teach in high schools now?

brenda003 · 12-09-2005, 12:59 AM

Was chatting w/ a buddy of mine and we came to discussing CS classes in high school. When I was in school they still taught Pascal. Just curious what they teach now?

kelp · 12-10-2005, 10:16 PM

They just teach us basic website design and no programming whatsoever. The web design comes from textbooks from many years ago. The code is old and messy. Sometimes they use Frontpage and even use their templates.

Will.Spencer · 12-11-2005, 08:24 AM

What should they teach in high school now?

kelp · 12-11-2005, 09:15 AM

They should begin teaching programming in sophmore year, while the freshman year covers the basics of computing since some people in the class have never touched a computer before. Most of the people in the class gets A's. What type of programming? I don't know, but my school would ease it up with a "maker" program because my teacher hates getting into code.

brenda003 · 12-11-2005, 08:12 PM

Oh my god!! They teach high school students Frontpage? That's scary. I don't know what they should teach, either. Actual HTML, XHTML, whatever seems like a decent start. Or a real programming language. I think even Pascal was cool, it taught all the basics.

Will.Spencer · 12-11-2005, 11:03 PM

If Sun Microsystems was forward thinking, they would donate Java textbooks to highschools across the globe.

brenda003 · 12-13-2005, 12:39 AM

Seriously. I can't grok Java, though. I've tried and tried again, and give up not much beyond Hello World.

jess · 12-15-2005, 12:39 AM

I left high school 5 years ago; I didn't learn one bit of web design.

I don't think programming should be taught in high school as it's way too complicated for most students.

Though there are certainly a percentage of 14+ year olds who can program - perhaps special classes can be made for them or make it an elective.

Will.Spencer · 12-15-2005, 12:40 AM

So what, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office?

etali · 12-15-2005, 07:51 AM

I live in the UK. I learned Pascal, but my niece, who is in high scool now, is learning how to make web pages. No programming though.

Her school is considered well off and 'advanced' compared to most in the area, and they are showing the students how to make web pages - in Microsoft Word!

She comes from a family of technically able people, but she has no interest in the stuff herself, and thinks that what she is doing at school is cool and clever.

I fear for the UK if thats what our kids are learning.

JBN-Rob · 12-15-2005, 10:13 PM

I was in school up until recently...

In Australia year 11 & 12 are optional to take, and in those years all subjects (except English) are elective. There are normally General Computing, Programming, and a handfull of other classes available. In Years 7-10 though , they do teach general computing, starting with basic word processing and imagry (in Paint and PSP), then moving on to sligtly more complex things such as web design (although it was mostly in FP), and an introduction into VB programming.

While it's not terribly indepth, it's more than enough for most students.

deuce · 12-16-2005, 07:02 AM

Quote:

I don't think programming should be taught in high school as it's way too complicated for most students.

No way, our computer science program is filled with people who know what they are doing 95% of the time. But there are the exceptions that shouldn't be in the class ... but any student reasonably good at math will be able to grasp at least CS1.

I'm a senior in high school and the AP Computer Science course covers Java. In CS2 we learned C++ and in CS1 we learned HTML and Basic.

I would say that AP Computer Science is challenging, but not as much as AP Physics Calc-based.

kelp · 12-16-2005, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

So what, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office?

That's the most basic class for computers at our school. It's called Computer Applications. It's really, really simple. Most of the people in there take it because they want an easy A and not because they want to know about computers.

brenda003 · 12-16-2005, 11:09 PM

Well, in my high school CS class there were only a handful of people who were even computer literate. A group of 5ish geeky guys. They basically did everyone else's projects. There were no pre-reqs or anything. This was like 10 years ago, though...

jess · 12-18-2005, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brenda003

Well, in my high school CS class there were only a handful of people who were even computer literate. A group of 5ish geeky guys. They basically did everyone else's projects. There were no pre-reqs or anything. This was like 10 years ago, though...

Ah yes.. 10 years ago.
Big difference back then

These days you have 12 year old kids who can write complete programs, their skills should be developed very early on.
I wish things like that were around when I was in high school and that was only 6 years ago.
All I learnt was how to use Excel and Word...

Fry · 12-18-2005, 07:02 PM

I remember having to endure painless hours of typing at school into Word, Access and Excel - all the time knowing that this would be completely useless for my future.

Its fine to learn it in an Office type class, but not IT!

MT400 · 01-02-2006, 11:27 PM

I'm in Highschool right now, I wont be starting computer class for couple more weeks. My friends just say it's typing, nothing more.

However, in the 8th grade we learned HTML. She didn't even teach us the DTD/doctype etc. She had us use her "copyrighted" books to learn which were very boring.

I would say that programming should be taught to us in highschool. It would be like free class on JSP/PHP/ASP/CF etc save me a lot of money and time for books.

Some kids I know wouldn't get it, but it's just like algebra. Computer class is an elective class. If you can't program nor want to learn, then don't take the class right?

Will.Spencer · 01-02-2006, 11:33 PM

One serious mistake I made in high-school was not taking typing.

Now I'm nearing 40 and I still can't type.

ops:

deuce · 01-03-2006, 11:15 AM

I learned typing in 3-5th grade so I'm glad my high school doesn't require typing for Computer Science lol. I can get some pretty good wpm's, I'd say the best teacher was instant messaging. Still teaching myself to type without looking at the keyboard.

Feety · 01-11-2006, 05:03 PM

In my Highschool they teach us Frontpage, VB, and just things to that point. Webpage Design ect.

zandyne · 01-16-2006, 09:33 PM

When I was in high school, the programming language they taught us was Q Basic. Nowadays, I think they have moved to Visual Basic at the least.

john23 · 01-31-2006, 04:07 PM

Yes, Visual Basic seems to be the standard beginners' language these days. It's not wise to scare people with C++ right off the bat

zandyne · 02-03-2006, 04:28 AM

C++ does have its uses though, and maybe some of the *concepts* should be taught relatively early. Object oriented programming and maybe classes for instance.

Will.Spencer · 02-03-2006, 09:27 AM

They could also teach OOP using Java.

Brennan · 03-08-2006, 10:31 PM

in New Zealand at my school atleast, we do at year 10/11 (14/15 yo) html (in notepad), VB and C++.

i thought you guys have would been more advanced :P