Posted on February 8, 2012
At the start of this year, if you’d asked me what subject I was going to drop, I would’ve probably said Psychology as that wasn’t one of my original choices. If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I would’ve said I had no idea as I was really enjoying all of my subjects and don’t want to give any of them up. Right now, I think I’m going to drop IT. Now, for someone with an interest in computers, this may seem like a very strange decision to make; surely I should stick with a subject that is relevant to something I enjoy, right? Well, yes, I should stick with a subject that is relevant to something I enjoy and unfortunately IT doesn’t really fall into that category. Let me explain.
My interest in computers revolves around how they work, fixing problems, coding, creating websites from scratch and other activities that require a basic level of computer knowledge. IT A level, however, doesn’t need students to have knowledge about computers. Take what I’ve been doing tonight, for example: tonight I have been placing content, which I wrote last year, and putting it into a website. “But surely creating website requires knowledge of HTML and whatnot?” I hear you say. Well, in my case it does; I created my website by typing HTML and CSS into Dreamweaver, no WYSWIG editing in sight. I also learnt some basic JavaScript in order to give my site an extra level of complexity. But will I get extra marks for doing this? No. The rest of my class is using a programme called Serif, which is a WYSWIG website editor, allowing you to simply drop content in without so entering so much as a basic tag. According to the specification, creating a website like this involves the same amount as skill as creating one via HTML, and therefore deserves the same amount of marks.
So why did I decide to make life more difficult for myself, if it’s not going to get me any extra marks? Well, quite frankly, I get bored. Dragging and dropping content into a pre-made template is boring. Coding and problem-solving, however, are not boring; they present a challenge and allow me to learn new things which I can use later on. But now I’m finished creating a template and have to copy, paste and format all of the content that I typed last year, whilst finding and creating images/videos/audio files to go with it. That is boring.
All of the text content, I created myself. Last year we had to write 13 essays about various topics relating to the Internet, by researching the subjects and then writing as much as we could about them (one of my essays was over 7,500 words long). While this was actually relatively interesting, what does it have to do with IT? Nout. It’s closer to an English essay than something you would expect from IT. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy writing, that’s why I have a blog and am taking English Language, but writing an essay about topics related to the Internet doesn’t require computer knowledge, it requires an ability to use Google to search the Internet. You have to be pretty tech savvy to do that, right?
IT definitely isn’t a subject that shows you have a good knowledge of computers, so what of use can it be? Well, it shows employers that you know your way around a computer and that you can perform some basic tasks such as word processing, researching and creating a simple website in a WYSIWYG editor. Sure that’s useful to some people, but not for those of us who actually want something to show that we know about computers. For that reason, I am most likely going to drop IT next year and focus on my other subjects instead; it is a very coursework-heavy subject, which gets worse next year, and I don’t want it to impact negatively on subjects which may be of use to me. I also know that I will get bored with the tasks that focus less on computer skills, and focus on those that do, meaning my coursework is likely to drop in quality.
In other words, IT doesn’t require any computer knowledge. In fact, when told that someone had created a website using only Notepad, a girl in my class said “He created it in Notepad!? How did he do that? That’s like me making a video in Microsoft Word!”. If we are doing websites, surely we should be aware of the basic concept of HTML and how the Internet is formed? Surely we should know what happens when we go to a website, what our computers are doing and why it is done like that? Apparently not. We just need to know how to drop a text box and some images onto a canvas, and allow a programme to convert that into HTML.
I would love to be taught some new skills, or be given a task that requires me to really think and do some problem solving, but I haven’t learnt much in IT, aside from what I have found out myself when deviating from what I’m supposed to do. Edexcel need to rethink the specification for IT coursework so that it requires more knowledge of computers. If people don’t know how to do something, they can work it out or be taught it, isn’t that the point of going to school? But, obviously, that isn’t going to happen soon, so I shall go back to copying and pasting content from a Pages document so that I have something to hand in tomorrow.
Edit: I have just looked at Edexcel’s exam spec. for IT and seen that they do, in fact, have topics that involve computer skills. Unfortunately, these aren’t the ones that my teachers picked.
Disclaimer: I am not saying that IT is a completely useless subject. I am sure IT is of use to many people, and it will appeal to many employers. What I am saying is that IT isn’t an advanced subject, doesn’t require knowledge of computers or an above-averge IQ.
My friend Luke would like to add: “I think IT is sh*t and a complete waste of all the time in the universe. In my opinion, it is pointless.”
