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Today's high school computer classes

agkm800

agkm800

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2009
672
4
I wonder what computer classes they have in high school nowadays. Twenty years ago, we had basic, prolog, and pascal.
 
The only software I used in GCSE ICT was Microsoft Office 2003.

I spent most of my time on flash games due to this.
 
I had a "computer programming" class in high school in 2003 that used Q-Basic. That was as advanced as we got. Just keep in mind, this is a small farm town in Oklahoma where my graduating class had 13. We didn't exactly have the money or teacher resources for high end programming software or desktops.
 
In GCSE ICT all we really did was word, PowerPoint and excel. In A level computing we're doing visual basics 6 and we've started doing a bit of pascal.
 
agkm800 said:
I wonder what computer classes they have in high school nowadays. Twenty years ago, we had basic, prolog, and pascal.
Click to expand...

For my A Levels we used Visual Basic, Prolog and Pascal. So not too much difference it would seem at first. That was around 2002.
 
back in my day (2006), h.s. classes of mine consisted of learning how to create a few web pages in HTML and typing up a job resume on word, along with learning basic stuff w/ Excel.

But of course, w/ the advent of iWork I've learned so much more on my own.

Fun class.

Reminds me of Peanut Butter Jelly Time!
 
motulist said:
What was the name of that program on Apple II? You'd write programming-like text instructions and then a little triangle thingie would draw on the screen according to the instruction code you wrote. Does anyone remember the name of that?

EDIT: Found it! Logo Turtle

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&h...+ii"+logo+turtle&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=&gs_rfai=
Click to expand...

Did you ever get to play with the actual physical robotic turtles? They worked on a similar principle and held a pen. We would put down a huge piece of paper in the main hall and have it draw shapes. I would have been about 10 at the time.
 
In Programming last year, we heavily used Visual Basic for about...half the year. Then the other half was mostly Alice.

In Web Page Development this year, we're using basic HTML in Notepad :)rolleyes:), and my teacher just taught us how to open Dreamweaver. My teacher, although she's very good at web page designing, can't teach for crap.
We're doing IC3 testing on the side, and the program specifically says to hide the taskbar. As students, we don't have the privileges to hide it, and she's like "Okay, well just continue." Then after, when we can't do most of the stuff on it, she's like "Oh...hmm. Oh well, I guess we can't do it". I guess me being in the same classroom last year (with a different teacher, thankfully), I know what we have to do to make it work, and I told her...yet she never listens. And she can't even figure out how to get past the Registration screen after you first open Dreamweaver.

/rant.

Other classes are Graphic Design classes, Information Systems (Where you work with the Office suite basically), etc.
 
I used to know how to use one of these beasts. :eek:
 

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i am currently doing my ict gcse will have finished it in 2 months time the only thinkl we have done is used ms office 07 :(:(:mad: on 10 year old dell laptops:mad::mad: slow dosn't start to discribe.... soo anoying and ending up hating microsoft and american computer companys even more than i thought was posible every lesson!(apart from intel nvidia ,gigabyte and kingston and cosiar! without wich i wouln't have my i7 linux box at home just the special hatred reserved for dell,hp ect)
damm you curiculum why can't we do some coding on linux boxes or at least use open office and lunix for our coursework
 
We had quite a few, some were canceled due to lack of interested students.. But most were offered while I went.
HTML/web design.
Computer programming course.. Teaches Turning, java and sometimes c++ (depending ont he teacher). Sometimes also VB.

Computer engineering course, taught circuits, logic gates, soldering. Turing programming.. Creating electornics and interface boards to connect to the parallel port and programming software (in turing) to make use of these.. Which was quite awesome, because our final assignment could be any thing we wanted. I created a home automation system all controlled through the computer.

Then there was the 2nd year of this course, which took what we learned in the first year a bit further. We created binary calculators with breadbords logic gates and transistors..
And reused our interface boards and built wooden joysticks and had to program a game to use the joystick (in turing) as our final project.

There was also an a+ training course. and also a Cisco networking course.
There were alsoa few more..
I Realllllly took these for granted through. Looking back, they offered quite a bit of courses with lots of knowledge which I use every day. (I was one of those know it all kids who thought the teachers knew less than I did).
..
Any ways, most have these have been canceled, and it REALLY shows how it affects students.

My younger brother who took the engineering course (a heavily stripped down compared to what I took) really shows how terrible it is for students.
They did lots of cut backs, and didn't do any of the cool stuff we did... So his soldering skills are quite terrible, and his overall electronics knowledge sucks.
Plus because they got rid of the a+ course and some other computer hardware courses, he is not great with computer hardware either.

He is great at programming though (currently taking Computer science in university).. .He is like those programmers you hear of that are great.. But can't do much else with computers and electronics (though he does try, and I am there to yell at him ;))

edit:
Hmm.. making this post really got me thinking. I should go back to my highscool and thank the few teachers who were there to help me.. Even though I was a bit of a douche (still am! ;) ). Crazy, how teachers havesuch an impact on your life and sometimes you don't even notice it.
 
I remember taking basic and pascal, I don't think the pascal language even exists in any form any longer.
 
I'm currently in high school, and these are the programs which I have used:

-Office 2003 Suite
-Photoshop (CS1)
-Peachtree (accounting class was such a waste of time)
-FCP
-Dreamweaver (CS1)

A friend of mine took the "computer science" course that my school offers, which covered basic Java, and the teacher had no idea what she was doing (she was always referring back to a "Java for Dummies" guide):eek:

@iJohnHenry - wth is that thing supposed to be???

-Don
 
Matty-p said:
i am currently doing my ict gcse will have finished it in 2 months time the only thinkl we have done is used ms office 07 :(:(:mad: on 10 year old dell laptops:mad::mad: slow dosn't start to discribe.... soo anoying and ending up hating microsoft and american computer companys even more than i thought was posible every lesson!(apart from intel nvidia ,gigabyte and kingston and cosiar! without wich i wouln't have my i7 linux box at home just the special hatred reserved for dell,hp ect)
damm you curiculum why can't we do some coding on linux boxes or at least use open office and lunix for our coursework
Click to expand...

Don't lose hope and keep at it. GCSEs are just an introduction really, so they have fairly broad appeal. However, if you do well at them you get to do A levels and then University, where it is a completely different world.
 
For mine,

Flash for grade 9, scratch, Alice and Turing for grade 10, Visual Basic 6 :mad: for Grade 11 University level and Java for Grade 12 university level
 
High Schoolers: Count your blessings. You probably don't realize how lucky you are.

Here's what we had in High School:

An Olympia Manual Typewriter. In "PICA" font. Made a mistake? Grab a new sheet of paper and start over, because "Whiteout" is unprofessional!
Thinking about growing your nails out? Think again! Those buttons were as hard to push as they look and go down. way down. Tap them fast and hard and 100% right every time. Paragraphs and Formatting? All in your head.


Be very thankful for "Delete", "Backspace", "Spellcheck", wonderful modern Keyboards and Fonts! It wasn't always so.

Good Luck,
Study Hard!
Keri

PS. For CAD/CAM, we had Drafting class. Drawing? Art Class. Internet? Not yet. Just Books. Didn't study? Fail and come back next year... a year behind!
 

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maflynn said:
I remember taking basic and pascal, I don't think the pascal language even exists in any form any longer.
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nope pascal still is around.
Hell pascal is still taught for some entry level programing courses. Hell it is a great procedure based programing language for getting people's feet wet in learning how to think like a computer.
I did Pascal in HS in like 1998. It helped me out when I had to do a little VB.net in 2003 since I understood the basic of programing, parameters by value or reference, method calls and so on.

It sure as heck made the jump over to object base programing a bit easier to have the back ground on because it is a much similar language.
That and HS love pascal because it is free and simple. Key part free and simple.
Java is not exactly simple for a beginner.
 
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