Computing is a Subject in its own right

Since it was introduced in 1989, ICT has been a subject that has to be taught to all children from age 5 to 14 and beyond. You would probably expect it to have listed all the programs or skills that students should learn and you'd probably expect it to contain Microsoft Office and DOS (remember it was created in 1989).


It's that last item that shows why a list of programs would have been so inappropriate. I can't tell you the number of times I was asked why we don't "teach them to use DOS because that's what they'll use when they leave school". I'm glad we didn't - it would have been a mistake. What we did, from the very beginning, was teach children to use computers to communicate, to handle data, to model and to control - using the most appropriate hardware and software for the task in hand.


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